Mr. Maurice Buckley:

I cannot comment on the incidence of valve failures. We would not have that information. My colleagues might be able to comment. With regard to the second point on the plumbing standard, SR 50, I believe it would be an addition to complete the standard work now; it has been there for a long time.

That delay was partly a question of resources and also a question of the industry agreeing the right level of regulation for the practitioners themselves. Are we talking about some sort of registration system for plumbers that they would go along with? Are we talking about some sort of central regulation? This is a question that has wider implications for that sector, for that trade, for the cost of building and so on. All of that needs to be taken together.

We in the NSAI and our colleagues in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government would be of the view that the time has now come to have that reference standard and to feed it into the training systems, the apprentice systems and so on. As mentioned earlier, that standard is being actively worked on, and we hope to have significant progress on it with hopefully everybody involved. The committee's efforts might encourage the industry stakeholders to become involved in that work so that we can finalise a high-quality document very quickly.