On a recent visit to southern Ireland we visited our niece’s three, who have recently-built houses, insulated to the highest standards, with triple glazing, draught-proof doors and windows and air source heat pump heating.

However, the heating has an ‘Achilles heel’. Sitting outside one of the properties, with a cattle shed only a hundred yards away, you could hardly smell the cattle poo. And yet in the house that was 400 yards away, when you were in the house with windows and doors shut the smell was unbearable.

Talking to another niece whose bungalow was in the middle of a field, the smell from freshly sprayed slurry (recently sprayed by her husband) was so pungent that they had to open all the windows and doors - the smell outside was better than the air inside the house after it had been sucked in by the air source heating.

Imagine the pumps in towns drawing in polluted air into your homes.

DM Deamer, Penleys Grove Street, Monkgate, York