How gratifying it was to read recently that the president of the Irish Planning Institute, John Spain, has expressed concern over housing development in the Irish countryside. According to Mr Spain, it is possible that too much damage has already been done to our landscape, especially along the western seaboard. And, he believes, without a major government initiative, little of value will be left "within a generation's time", writes Robert O'Byrne.
Mr Spain is certainly right that a national policy to bring about an end to the destruction of outstanding landscapes should be established. At the moment, to employ the term "planning" in relation to development in rural Ireland is to engage in an abuse of language. There appears to be little or no planning, merely a succession of individual initiatives which may enhance the living standards of the people immediately involved but rarely do anything for the wider community.
However, in the current furore over planning, there is one subject which, if mentioned at all, tends to be approached only in the most oblique fashion. This is the not-unimportant matter of design. Surely here is a key element in the discussion, and yet on the basis of what has been written and said in the public arena, an observer might be led to conclude that there was no problem with the design of housing in the countryside.
Why this reluctance to engage with the subject? Could it be, perhaps, that those opposed to rural development are worried about being stigmatised as "snobbish" and "elitist", the two words invariably thrown about whenever questions of taste come up in conversation? Well, let this risk be taken because unless the whole business of appropriate design for the Irish landscape is properly tackled, then all debate about rural development will be incomplete and false.
Let that debate begin by looking at numbers. Many proponents of development in the countryside point out that the population used to be much greater than is now the case - and that far more people lived in a rural rather than urban environment. This is certainly the case, but such an argument ignores the conditions under which the majority of that population lived in earlier centuries. They were crammed tightly together in huts made from whatever materials came to hand, in buildings so primitively constructed that most of these dwellings could not even be described as cottages. Such homes were, quite literally, organic: they arose out of the soil and they invariably - and with great rapidity - became reabsorbed into the soil. They deserved this fate and their loss cannot possibly be regretted.
Barely visible on the landscape, these wretched hovels were, therefore, very different from the multitude of dormer-windowed bungalows which have sprung up across the Irish countryside in recent years. But the latter also bear absolutely no resemblance to what has come to be considered the archetype of Irish vernacular architecture - the white-washed and thatched cottage. Their exteriors, especially when viewed from a distance or through the glaze of a Paul Henry canvas, possess a great deal of charm and seem to sit naturally in the landscape, helped once more by the use in construction of natural materials.
The interior of the traditional Irish cottage was never very appealing. It would be full of smoke, rather dark, distinctly dank thanks to the thatch and none too comfortable. Space was limited and made still more so by having to be shared with the household's livestock. No wonder the majority of their owners abandoned these buildings as fast as possible and put up smart new bungalows filled with big windows and lots of lovely central heating. Outside, instead of a muddy yard, it was now possible to have an expanse of lawn, preferably edged either with a line of evergreen trees or a balustraded wall.
The role model for these bungalows has never been rural. Their natural environment is the suburb, their context a line of similar houses built in serried rows. Dropped into the countryside, they look out of place and lead precisely to the problem identified by John Spain: the "scattering of urban housing over wide areas almost at random". Insufficient care over preliminary planning results in rural development that has a distinctly un-rural appearance.
It is always tempting to condemn novelty solely on the basis of lack of precedent, and this often occurs with respect to new housing in the countryside. A field previously untouched by development suddenly becomes filled with buildings and a familiar prospect is lost. But all housing has to start this way. When William Conolly decided to build himself a new country residence in the 1720s, he chose a virgin site in Co Kildare and, as if this was not enough of an affront to local sensibilities, employed a foreign architect to design the place. The result was Castletown House, which became the archetype of Irish Palladian architecture and is now regarded as one of the finest buildings in the country. Merrion Square in central Dublin was once unspoilt countryside, and so too was Christchurch Cathedral, Áras an Uachtaráin and every other site today occupied by one of our cherished architectural monuments. In order to build anew, some of the landscape has to be sacrificed.
The debate, therefore, needs to be not about whether development should take place, but about the design and character of that development. This debate has still not started even while more and more of our countryside is subjected to ill-advised -- and poorly-designed - new housing. The old forms of vernacular architecture are gone for good; we cannot realistically expect anyone to live under the same conditions as did our forbears. But no new forms for rural housing have been proposed, even by members of the architectural profession who might be thought to have an interest in the subject. Until the importance of good design is recognised, suburban bungalows will continue to be constructed across the landscape.