Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Fulham. That has been very constructive. The guidelines I referred to, as have others, were devised at a time when the Ford Fiesta, which was a small hatchback, was the bestselling car in Ireland. We have very narrow parking spaces set down and prescribed by local authorities when planning permissions are granted and new developments are happening. It is happening all over the country. That does not reflect the needs of society at the moment or the type of cars that people are trying to get in and out of parking spaces.

It would be a great body of work for our committee to at some stage invite Department of Transport officials to examine issues such as footpath widths, widths of car parking spaces, and the ratio of wheelchair spaces to parent-child spaces and regular parking spaces. It would be a great body of work if we were to bring them in for a week or two to consider a revision of some of those figures, although not the document itself, which is quite good. The figures need to reflect everything that Ms Tinsley, Mr. Fulham and members have said today, in addition to everything we see in our local supermarket car parks where people are struggling to get in and out of cars, and are wedged in and cramped up. As a society, people are probably not getting smaller. We are probably all getting a little bigger, as are the cars, but the measurements have not changed one bit and they are restrictive. It would be great if our committee could do some work on that in 2022.

My questions are finished. I again thank all our witnesses. I did not get to all of them, but I have followed them during the meeting. I thank them for everything.