Oral Answers to Questions — Infrastructure – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:30 pm on 4 October 2016.
I do not have the information at hand about the specific residential schemes that you have mentioned. We are progressing with a couple of residential schemes, and I discussed those with officials last week.
The current policy, which came into force in 2007, has been an issue to date, and I have tasked officials to look at it. There is demand in many areas for these parking schemes, and we need to meet that demand in a number of areas. We will need a policy that equips us with the legal arguments to take cognisance of objections but move ahead in a fair-handed way.
I thank the Minister for his answer. One of the first questions that I asked in the Assembly, in 2011, was about residents' parking schemes. The issue then was the hold-up in Belfast: now, five years on, what reassurance can he give my constituents that the hold-up in Belfast will not mean that we never get to North Down?
Let me reassure the Member that that will no longer be an excuse. When I came into post, residents in Derry made exactly the same complaint: that their scheme was being held up because we could not get agreement in Belfast. We decoupled the schemes straight away and were able to launch a pilot in Derry. I want to judge each case on its merits. It should not be a case of one town being held up because of another town when there is absolutely no resemblance to the case in hand.