The Irish Times

Waterford is like "a bird with one wing", as the city council's senior planner John Andrews puts it - the entire city centre and most of the suburbs are located on the south bank of the River Suir, behind what was once described as "the noblest quay in Europe". Like Limerick, Waterford is constrained by an artificial boundary, which takes in barely more than a sliver of the Suir's north bank and even bisects the Ard Rí Hotel, that eight-storey slab that was plonked on Sion Hill in the late 1960s. Not far beyond the church in Ferrybank, is Co Kilkenny. The rapidly-developing suburb of Abbeylands, less than two miles from the centre, is in the "Waterford Environs", and is administered by Kilkenny County Council's rural-based Pilltown area committee.