Reply To: Irish say no to PVC windows

Yes. You always think that any day now it’s going to stop and people are going to realise that the timber sash window is an essential design characteristic in Irish period buildings, but it just goes on.

The agressive marketing strategies of the PVC companies is a lot to blame. In the Yellow Pages there’s about 30 pages non stop of PVC company ads and maybe one or two pages for wooden window making or repairing. And they bombard old buildings with leaflets for PVC.

While the enforcement system is there for unauthorised window replacement in protected structures, it is usually ignored cos owners reckon they won’t be taken to court for something as “unimportant” as PVC windows.

Visual awareness is low in this country and a lot of people have PVC installed in good faith, thinking that by doing so they are improving and restoring the building.

I’ve made loads of complaints (on behalf of an taisce dublin city) about PVC and other unauthorised alterations to prot. strucs. and only a handful have ever been resolved. Complained about a prot. struc. on Fownes St. last year, told Frank McD. and he kindly put a piece in the Times for me.

I’d say in country towns there’s no hope at all of getting PVC out once it goes in.