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masterluke3

I have been looking at housing do-er upper properties in my area recently and I've found 2 houses with sewer related issues. I hope you can perhaps answer few questions.

One is a very old property which had a mains sewer connection at the front of the house, which (the estate agent tells me) stopped working some time ago and so sewerage was rerouted to a connection over the boundary with next door, and into next doors sewer connection. No right of way was obtainedfor this pipe and so this connection is not reliable going forward. I am told I have 2 choices.

A) Attempt to gain permission for a septic/treatment system in the back garden (potentially unlikely as we are in a town and there is a stream at the end of the garden) or
Attempt to reconnect to mains sewer.

The house is on a high st of a village and I'm told the sewer going down the middle of the road outside the house. The property has a basement so and is terraced.

My questions are...

Who is responsible for damage to sewer pipes and where do these responsibilities begin and end? Presumably I would be responsible for issues before the boundary and the council is responsible outside the boundary? Who pays? How much is this likely to be? How do I go about finding out more? Do I need to obtain planning permission to reconnect to the mains sewer? If the street needs digging up then who does this? How long would this all take?

Irish Water: Agata

Hi masterluke3,

Thanks for getting in touch.

For more information on wastewater pipe responsibility you can visit our website here. This will give you a further insight into public side and private side responsibility. 

Irish Water is responsible for the maintenance of the public wastewater infrastructure. 

Should you wish to consider connecting to the sewer mains you can visit the Connections section of our website here, which will provide you with all the information required. 

I hope you find this information helpful, please do not hesitate to contact us again if you have any further queries. 

Kind regards, 
Agata