That's pretty amazing that the minister knows anything about a technical issue. Over here you'd be referred to the ETCI :P
The minister would be wondering if an RCD was some new political party he/she hadn't heard of yet !
If you read some of the debates on electrical standards here from the 1950s/60s you realise just how clueless they were!
All of the real work happens at technical bodies ministers are generally quite clueless.
The reason we adopted BS1363 as an exclusive standard was for pretty much the same reason though.
We'd a situation where Schuko existed along side various BS546 sockets and there were quite a lot of shocks caused by appliances being connected to sockets that were not making earth contact i.e. schuko jammed into BS546 or BS1363.
So, BS1363 was transposed into Irish standards as IS 401 and enforced strictly. The other standards have effectively completely vanished.
It's no longer legal to sell an appliance for domestic use without an IS401 or BS1363 approved plug fitted and it's been that way for quite a long time.
Last edited by djk; 08/28/07 04:39 PM.
