Ms Eimear Fox:

I 100% agree. The multidisciplinary approach to all infrastructure projects is critical because as the Deputy says, the engineers have one set of skills and landscape architects have another. There is a role for drainage engineers in looking at nature-based solutions and sustainable urban drainage systems, SUDS. I have very much been involved with DMURS. The principle of DMURS is we look at a street and how that space is reallocated. At the moment, so many of our streets are so dominated by the carriageway, which is often extra-wide and dominated by car-parking. At that principal concept stage of looking at a streetscape to reallocate space we need to have gender and children's issues involved right at that initial stage as space is being reallocated. Space can be multifunctional as well so it does not have to be just a transport element or just a landscape element or a SUDS element. They can all be joined together. All of these threads, including community, transport, water management and biodiversity can all be incorporated but there needs to be that vision at the project level which has all these voices. That is a gap in certainly some of the larger authorities like those Dublin, Cork and Limerick that have that expertise at the local level. Other authorities do not have that level of expertise and it is critical we have that thinking because it is about having more minds involved, whether they are male or female or engineers or landscape architects.

Even at the initial stages, the more views we have, the better the project will be. That multifunctional element of streetscape is critical, which the design manual for urban roads and streets, DMURS, pushes.