Are CO alarms to be made mandatory in NI?

Article date : 17/08/2010

Carbon monoxide alarms may become mandatory in Northern Ireland after it was revealed that enterprise minister Arlene Foster and finance minister Sammy Wilson supported the idea.

The news comes after a suspected leak in a holiday apartment killed 18-year-olds Aaron Davidson and Neil McFerran in Castlerock earlier this month.

Ms Foster said: "I share peoples' safety concerns about carbon monoxide and I will meet with ... [Ms] Wilson, to determine the legislation required to make carbon monoxide detectors compulsory in new builds."

Currently, there are no regulations to ensure safety equipment of this kind is installed in houses throughout Britain, with boilers, furnaces and water heaters all common sources for monoxide poisoning.

However, the enterprise minister urged people not to wait for it to become compulsory to install a detector and instead advised homeowners to do it as soon as possible.

The deaths in Castlerock have also prompted Coleraine Borough Council's Environmental Health Department to issue letters to local businesses warning them of the dangers of carbon monoxide, the local Times newspaper reports.

Written by Tony Harrison

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