Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This leads me on to another question. We hear a great deal about the big-ticket items such as the €81 million project mentioned by Mr. Logan in Waterford on the North Quays. If I am a private building owner, and the Department has done a very nice square, a public space, under the new URDF, and I want to develop my second or third floor into apartments and residential living space, or even the lower floor if it complies with the local area plan, I do not have any control over the footpath outside. Nobody wants to walk out the front door of their apartment with a child to a 2 ft. wide footpath. One would want some space there for planters and so forth. Such a person has no control over that but the local authority does. How does the interaction work on smaller jobs like that to improve the offering for pedestrians in terms of the safety aspect and making it more attractive to bring it back into residential use? These are for quite small projects.