For reasons obvious to itself, the council, however, stopped the work (which was exempted development) until reports from qualified conservation experts were submitted assessing how the development would impact on the building next door, which actually was a 'protected structure'.

It's every architect's worst nightmare when councils pull stunts like this: stretching the planning legislation to power-trip everyone into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac where suddenly a small problem which would have been solved with a businesslike 10-minute site meeting results in six months of everyone's lives wasted.

Meanwhile, in another part of Co Waterford you'll find a place called Portlaw. Established in 1825 by a Quaker family called Malcomson, Portlaw was built around a massive cotton mill designed to match the giant mills of the highly industrialised north of England.

Like other paternalistic Quaker industrialists of the 19thcentury, the Malcomsons had a genuine concern for the welfare of their workforce, for whom they built an extraordinary little village in idyllic surroundings outside the factory gates.

What a village! Large, comfortable houses with piped gas, privies and allotments.

There was an unheard-of-for-the-time resident surgeon and hospital; a school for the children and special facilities for adults who wanted to improve their literacy.

Times, sadly, change and by the early 20thcentury the huge cotton mill (now a 'protected structure') was abandoned. It was eventually to find use as a tannery but that business, too, failed and from the mid-1980s the cotton mill, as well as an extremely fine Malcomson-owned house located nearby, were left to the forces of nature.

The now appallingly derelict structure is hard to find . . . miles away from a national route, in a sleepy village, completely concealed from view by a hill, gates and tall trees. You'd never know it's there. The mill owners don't have anything like the millions of euro it would take to effect a renovation.

Now, the same piece of legislation which the council used to give the restaurateurs we mentioned earlier a hard time also has provisions for how a council should act when a building owner isn't in a position to take care of its protected structure.

Essentially, these provisions involve the council taking some form of responsibility, including compulsory purchase, and if ever there was a candidate in the whole of Ireland which met the criteria for council intervention, the Portlaw Cotton Mill is the one.

Nevertheless, for at least seven years Waterford County Council has managed to avoid confronting its responsibility.

This same scenario is being played out all over the country: local authorities taking the most extreme interpretation of planning legislation (especially when it comes to conservation) for the sole purpose of giving average people a hard time. But for some reason they are blind to the clauses in the law which point out that they, too, have obligations to act on behalf of the community.

And that's how the planning legislation works in this country: assiduously applied, but only where it sticks.