Mr. Aidan O'Connor:

On behalf of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and my colleague, Mr. Martin Vaughan, I thank the Chairman for the invitation to attend this meeting. We are from the architecture and building standards section of the Department, which section sets minimum standards for building regulations, with which members are familiar. The standards set are mandatory and must be complied with. The references in the documentation circulated and in the "blue book" - site development works - are recommendations and, therefore, not part of the building regulations. They are external to buildings and guidance documents.

On 1 January 2014 Irish Water assumed statutory responsibility for public water services. It is the designated national authority and, therefore, responsible for water services, including infrastructure and water meter boxes. The statutory role played formerly by the local authorities, acting as water service authorities, no longer pertains.

Our recommendations in this guidance document were to local authorities in general, and there are quite a number of them. Now we are dealing with one single national authority. My responsibility is to deal with the matters specifically relating to the guidance that is given in the document, such as the recommendations for site development work and to deal with the circulars, namely, BC 9/2008 and BC 6/2009, which are relevant to this discussion and to the practices of the guidance.

The origins of this guidance document are quite noble, when one looks at it. It goes back to An Foras Forbartha, where it was first published in 1974. It was amended in 1984. The Department then published a guidance document based on that in 1998. It is, as I said, recommended standards guidance for local authorities that, effectively, did not have their own guidance, although some local authorities did. They would have had by-laws, etc. The document does not contain all the possible solutions. It allows the authorities to come forward with alternatives and it recognises that some authorities provide their own documented recommendations. There is a broad recognition in the foreword of this document to explain where it sits in the sense of guidance.

When we refer to non-compliance with the building regulations, we mean there is an obligation to comply and, therefore, there is non-compliance. Strictly speaking, there has been a failure to adhere to the law. The blue book does not carry the force of law. It is a recommendation and a guidance document only. Confusion should be avoided, because we are the authority, if one likes, for both.