Sir, – Michael Finan (March 7th) writes of the recently published revised regulations which have come about as a result of the Priory Hall fiasco, in which a firewall, which, by law, should have been capable of withstanding fire for a certain amount of time in order to give residents a chance to evacuate the building, was not, according to media reports, actually a firewall.
Mr Finan complains of numerous flaws with the legislation. It is a pity, if he is correct, that these regulations do not achieve the purpose which they should have been intended to achieve. Namely, that any individual who participates in the construction of a building, from the architect who designed the building right through to the plasterer who finishes it, and all engineers and tradesmen between, are all personally liable for the portion of the work which they carried out.
Obviously, the architect who designed the building can’t be responsible for the actual hands-on construction of that building, nor a bricklayer for the under-specification by the architect of, for example, a structural column.
Rather, if every individual has personally to sign for the work that they have carried out, certifying that the work is built to, at least, the minimum standard as laid down in law, and they understand that they are personally liable with personal sanctions for their portion of the work, it is highly likely that shoddy construction work would disappear overnight, when people realise that they could end up in jail and drummed out of the industry.
The aviation industry uses a similar system. Every job, no matter how small, is signed off by the technician and their supervisor and the records are retained for the lifetime of the aircraft. So the system would be workable. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Royal Oak Road,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.