ONE of the most remarkable phenomena in Ireland today, according to Leo Hallissey, is that people who live in suburban housing estates in Dublin and elsewhere are being persuaded to spend their summer holidays in virtual" suburban housing estates in other parts of the country.
Mr Hallissey, a primary school principal who runs the Connemara Environmental Education Centre in Letterfrack, cites the example of Clifden Glen, a scheme of 120-plus holiday homes two miles from Clifden a "town outside a town" - where the houses ("they call them lodges") are just 15 feet from each other.
"Near the Connemara Golf Club in Ballyconncely, there's another scheme of holiday homes laid out like a suburban housing estate, complete with street lights. It looks really strange at night-time, this vision of suburbia in a rural landscape. But you've got to compliment them on their marketing expertise."
However, it isn't just purpose-built schemes that are changing the face of Connemara. "If you take the Errislannan peninsula, there are around 44 houses on it and 39 of them are second homes. I've also seen statistics which show that second homes now account for 64 per cent of the housing stock in three townlands south of Clifden".
Leo Hallissey sees this colonisation of Connemara as "a new form of land clearance" and says it's "very strange that it should be happening at a time when we're commemorating the Famine." He also has an apocalyptic vision of Connemara in 2020, when the local people will be reduced to working as caretakers and security guards.
The signs are already apparent. One German who owns a holiday home overlooking Derryinver Bay, near Renvyle, has reacted to two burglaries by securing his house with roller shutters, which are pulled down over all of the windows while he is away. How long will it be before other second home owners resort to similar devices?
"With all of these houses sitting there empty for most of the year, if you're into robbing televisions, you'll come to Connemara and take 25 in one go. So what we'll have is people involved in some kind of Securicor operation, as well as a migrant population that'll move in for the summer and move out. That's what's facing us," he says.
"When you pan a camera around the landscape, it looks brilliant. Many of these second homes are good houses and their owners have spent a few bob on doing them up right. But you won't realise that they're all empty." Those who were born, lived and died in those houses, he adds, have all been wiped out.
"This is not an environmental argument about keeping a place pretty, or the whole notion of aesthetics. This is about the moving on of a people. And what's happening here has already happened to a huge extent in Donegal and West Cork, and it's going to happen in South Mayo, Sligo, Waterford and anywhere else that's beautiful."
In the case of Connemara, he says second homes are "putting tremendous pressure" on the community, while contributing nothing to it. "The owners do their shopping at Superquinn in Dublin and arrive here with the car boot full of booze and food. All they spend locally is on a few pints in a pub and maybe a meal out somewhere".
According to Leo Hallissey, "there's a whole legal belt down around Round stone and if you go to a pub there on a bank holiday weekend, you might as well be in the Shelbourne Bar in Dublin". And the lush Moyard area, between Letterfrack and Clifden, where homes have fetched up to £250,000, is so exclusive that it's now known locally as "Moyard 4".
"Nothing is going there for less than £80,000," he says. "The idea of that misty cottage you'd think could be bought for £5,000, which is going to be your project and you'd do all of the work on it yourself, that'll cost you £40,000. Any site in this area with a derelict stone building on it, you're talking, about £40,000 or maybe - more.
His own son recently bought a house in the Mourne Mountains in Co Down, with spectacular views, and renovated it - all for just £35,000. "A similar house in the same kind of setting around these parts would set you back £135,000, without a shadow of a doubt, and that puts it well outside the range of local people.
"What this means is that when I look at the 25 kids in my infants' class, I know they haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of staying in Connemara. Because how will they be able to amass in a lifetime £25,000 to buy a site for a house if they end up working in a part-time job for £3 an hour during the 12-week summer season?
"With the way we're going, we're just getting them ready for flight. If you look at the statistics in the schools, which are a very frightening indicator, they show that Leenane has 13 children leaving school this year, the school in Tully has halved its population in six years. And in Cashel, there is something like two children under 10.
"What it looks like in 20 years time is that we'll be lucky if we have two left of the 13 primary schools in our area at present. That's the whole of north-west Connemara, from Leenane right down to Roundstone - a vast area which was identified in the 1970s as the largest piece of special landscape in the country. But what we're doing now is dismantling it."
FOR Leo Hallissey, this is "basically the boot boys, answer to planning" aimed at "placating capital and seeing that people who have a disposable income have places in which to dispose of it." Most of the beneficiaries are Irish - city dwellers from Galway and, more usually, from Dublin, "legal eagles with loads of money to spare.
He can't see the trend being reversed without major intervention. "For a start, there should be a tax of, say, £800 a year on all second homes. It wouldn't even involve any hardship because all they would have to do is to rent them out for two weeks to get the money back. But the revenue could be used locally to provide proper jobs and affordable housing.
He cites the example of Letterfrack Industrial School, which houses a furniture college run by the community-based Connemara West. "They're just after putting nearly £3 million into it to create a wood technology centre and that's something positive. But it's only a pittance when you consider that it takes £12 million to build a good hotel."
The college in Letterfrack, he feels, "gives a good signal to the community because it's about excellence and we need some examples of excellence to raise people's morale. We've had loo years of tourism in Connemara, yet we've managed to create no jobs, other than part-time jobs or seasonal jobs which are lowly paid."
Connemara West also developed its own cluster of holiday homes at Tully Cross "and the few bob that's made from them goes into the community" rather than ending up in the bank account of some outside investor. "As well as that, a group of American students come here for a whole semester and make a big contribution to the community."
On the housing front, Leo Hallissey believes that Galway County Council should be following the example of its counterpart in Cork in buying up parcels of land and providing sites for local people to build houses, along with a design service. This would overcome the "connotations" which people still associate with public housing.
"If we as a nation want to sustain beautiful places and if we really believe that Connemara is a place of cultural significance, then we have to do something about it. But I would hate to think that people would toss this away and say `that's just these people down in Connemara being awkward again, because they're an awkward breed anyway'.
"One of the saddest things is that the environmental lobby has allowed itself to be sidelined. Because when we're looking at different ecologies, this is twisted by some who say that three flowers in a bog, or the sightings of some rare birds, are more important than the people who have to live in this landscape and try to provide for their children."
Leo Hallissey wants to ensure that the indigenous, pre-existing population of Connemara does not become residual. "If over 50 per cent of the houses in an area are second homes, then that should be a reason for refusing permission for any more of them. This may cut across property rights but what about the community's right to survive?"
In the meantime, he is fearful of the consequences if the business lobby in Clifden manages to persuade the incoming Government to designate the area for the same tax incentives available in Achill and other resorts. Because this could lead to more clusters of holiday homes being shovelled into the landscape, as is happening elsewhere.
The trouble with Ireland is that there's a price tag on everything and everything is for sale. "If you want to get planning permission on the seaward side of the road, tell them you're building a cluster - that's the new joke around here," he says. "We're just a small part of the `Ireland for Sale' series."
