They were available in Ireland for quite a long time but it's rare to see an installation with all breakers before the mid 1980s!
You'll see plenty of installations with diazed/neozed fuses and an RCD or two. They're configured exactly the same way as a modern distribution board, just with neozed instead of MCBs
I don't know why, but it took Irish electricians a while to switch over to using MCBs.. I think it could have been a cost issue in the early days. I know that many electricians in the early 80s were not comfortable with anything other than Neozed/Diazed which had worked well for many many years.
Even today we still usually have 1 single neozed fuse on the board as the "main fuse" rather than a breaker.
Neozed and Diazed were and still are excellent systems though. You can't overfuse them (well at least not without considerable tampering!) and they're pretty much as effective as an MCB and as easy to install. However, they are a BIT less convienient than switching a tripped MCB back up. However, we had a Diazed system with an RCD for years and in all that time a fuse never blew!
Same in my current house, I've never yet seen an MCB trip.
The RCD has several times though in both cases.. usual cause : damp clothes iron connections! or a wet kettle!
