SEANAD:IN WHAT may have been the last act of the outgoing Seanad, it has passed landmark legislation to reform building contracts to ensure prompt payment for sub-contractors and introduce a dispute resolution mechanism.
The Construction Contracts Bill, introduced by Independent Senator Feargal Quinn, passed committee and final stages yesterday and Senators appealed for the incoming Dáil to deal with the Bill as a matter of urgency.
Mr Quinn said the Bill would be “good news” legislation for the government in its first 100 days, if the Dáil dealt with it as a priority.
He said the legislation “falls quite far short of the aims and objectives and wishes” of those who met last May to try to help subcontractors forced to continue work on contracts despite not being paid.
It needed improvement and he hoped that would happen within the new government’s first three months in office.
Outgoing Minister of State Dara Calleary accepted there were some gaps in the legislation but to fully address them they needed a “regulatory impact assessment” which he said would be conducted quickly and before the Bill was dealt with by the Dáil.
A depleted Seanad dealt in a one-day sitting with the legislation in the wake of the election of 14 former senators to the Dáil.
After the passage of the legislation the House was adjourned Sine Die or indefinitely and while there were calls for it to sit again before the Seanad elections to debate issues such as the programme for government, it remained unclear last night whether that should happen.
Mr Quinn’s Bill received rare priority status as it is most unusual for either Dáil or Seanad to pass a private member’s Bill.
He said the legislation aimed to “have a certainty of timing payments, a certainty of the amount of payments, a certainty of the enforcement” of payment and “a certainty that the cash is secure”.
Fiona O’Malley (Ind) argued the Bill was “quite flawed”. It “purports to protect suppliers but it doesn’t protect suppliers of subcontractors” and she could not understand the specific exclusion of the supply of materials from the legislation.