Dr. Oliver Kinnane:

What we would call for is greater investment in facilities for greater testing so we could move towards a more performance-based approach towards concrete approval. Essentially, there is a wide range of materials being used across Europe as cement replacement - calcined clays, limestone fines and things like that - that we have restrictions on here in Ireland. We are very innovative with the use of ground granulated blast-furnace slag, GGBS, which is a by-product of the steel industry, as a cement replacement but we are quite strictly confined otherwise. We would propose that a wider range of materials be allowed to replace high embodied carbon cement and there be greater investment in testing, particularly around durability and things like chloride ingress and freeze-thaw.