BCAR One Year On: Practical Implications For Irish Developers

The Building Control Regulations (BCAR) – first introduced in Ireland in 2014 – were significantly extended when the Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2025 came into force on 1 May 2025.

In simple terms, the amended regulations expanded the scope of when Fire Safety Certificates and Disability Access Certificates are required. More than a year on, there is enough evidence to move past commentary on what the changes said on paper, and look honestly at what they have actually meant for developers, advisers, and active projects caught midstream in the changing process. 

The certificate of compliance on completion: The sharpest edge of the reforms

What caught people off guard was not the headline certificate changes, but the certificate of compliance on completion. The gap between practical completion and full registration on the Building Control Management System (BCMS) has become a recurring problem across transactional practice.

The pattern is a familiar one: a developer reaches practical completion, the contractor stands down, the development appears ready to transact – but the BCMS documentation is not fully in order. The lender will not draw down. The tenant will not take occupation. Nothing moves.

This friction is structural. Lenders and tenants have shown very little appetite for flexibility, and incomplete documentation carries real risk of title defects that neither party wants to deal with. It also tends to surface at the worst possible moment, when commercial pressure to close is at its highest and the development team has already completed their work. The fix is rarely complicated, but it requires attention to the compliance chain considerably earlier in the project lifecycle than most development teams have been applying it. 

Projects caught mid-stream: Getting the regime question right

A number of active projects were caught in the middle when the reforms came into force. The question (which regime applies, and what does that mean now?) was not straightforward. It still is not for some projects.

Some specific issues came up repeatedly: 

1. Phased developments where early phases had commenced under the pre-2025 regime but later phases had not. 
2. Mixed-use schemes where residential and commercial elements attracted different certificate requirements. 
3. Projects where post-May 2025 design changes brought fresh compliance obligations into play.

The starting point to answer these questions is a clear, phase-by-phase audit of where each part of the development sits relative to 1 May 2025. Getting that wrong has real downstream consequences for completion, registration and transaction timing. Worth noting, the cost of resolving the regime question before practical completion is a fraction of what it costs to resolve it after.

The Dromaprop decision: an underused tool for phased schemes

The High Court's decision in Dromaprop [2024] IEHC 234 was handed down before the 2025 reforms, but it’s directly relevant to phased schemes. The judgment confirmed that Building Control Authorities (BCAs) cannot issue blanket refusals for uncertified phases of a development. Each phase must be considered on its own terms. A year and a bit later, the full implications of that decision have not been fully worked through – not by practitioners and not by the authorities. 

For developers with phased schemes, three things should be in hand now: 

1. Know the judgment and use it as a lever when a BCA takes an unduly broad approach to an uncertified phase. 
2. Map each phase clearly so the evidential foundation is in place before a dispute arises. 
3. Do not wait for the problem to crystallise, because the developers best placed to use the Dromaprop case effectively are those who have already done the groundwork.

The bottom line

In our view, the 2025 reforms are broadly working. That said, the sector is still absorbing their full implications, and the compliance chain is generating avoidable cost and delay where it should not be. Developers and their advisers need to stop treating building control compliance as a completion-stage exercise. It is a transactional and financing issue from the moment a project is conceived. Dromaprop gives phased-scheme developers a tool that few are currently using to full effect, and that advantage will not last indefinitely.