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THE PEOPLE living in a handful of newly-built houses in a small estate in Dublin were distinctly unimpressed when sewage started backing up into their homes earlier this year. It became clear that the problem wasn’t isolated to a single house or two so the residents employed an engineer to investigate the problem.

He found that the pipes laid by the builder and connected to Dublin City Council’s main sewer network were of poor quality and not fit for the purpose. In the normal course of events, the council would have taken responsibility for rectifying the problem but this is not a normal situation as the developer had never had his work approved by the authorities. As it effectively had no planning permission, the council washed its hands of the situation.