The councillor with Kildare County Council was drunk, and the word he used to describe what the council members were doing was the f-word. But it is not Irish Times house style to use that word, so we will settle instead for a softer one. And this is what he said to me at a party two weeks ago: "We've done a terrible thing, a terrible thing. We voted to rezone the land outside Ballymore [Eustace] and now it's shagged. We've shagged Ballymore and this'll be the death of it."
This business of Ballymore being shagged was new to me, having only recently moved to Kildare; and even then, living several miles from the village, I was unfamiliar with the details of its outskirts. But of course I knew Ballymore for its untroubled tranquillity, and being unaware of the enormity of what he was referring to, I merely tut-tutted in disapproval. Had I known the truth, I should have slain him on the spot, for he was right: the elected councillors of the Co Kildare, in line with the illustrious example of what they have done elsewhere in the county, and of course with that of their peers in other counties, have effectively shagged Ballymore.
Unspoilt village
Ballymore is one of the great unspoilt villages of Leinster. It is a small place and it is easy to miss, for it is by-passed by the main route south from west Wicklow, the N81. It is a charming but not backward little backwater, with a main square and neat lines of cottages approaching its four sides, numbering in all some 300 houses. It has half-a-dozen traditional pubs, all of which are a pleasure to drink in, where the pint is served with traditional reverence, and it has two pub-restaurants, The Thatch and The Ballymore Inn, both in their own way being excellent.
The village has four shops and two churches, one Catholic, the other Church of Ireland. The entire area has the nice feeling of a community in balance and at peace; a small but contented village where everybody knows everybody else and shopping is of the ancient conversational variety, and all serving a far larger network of crossroad hamlets, farms and small businesses. It is, in short, the kind of community which is the staple of radio and television soaps, from The Archers through to Glenroe and Ballykissangel. Last week, an advertisement in the Irish Independent made plain what my drunken friend had been rambling on about: the elected county councillors of Kildare have chosen to shag Ballymore Eustace well and truly from a height. They have voted to rezone a 62.2-acre site to the south of the village for residential purposes, and something called Abbeydrive Developments has announced that it is seeking planning permission for 500 houses as an annexe to a village which possesses at the most 300 at present.
Dormitory town
You can cut this whatever you like, but it comes down to this: Kildare county councillors have voted to destroy Ballymore Eustace and turn it into a dormitory town; all that remains is the details of the village's death. Because we can be sure that the figure of 507 houses is merely an opening bargaining figure which will cause the people of Ballymore to fall on their knees in gratitude if it is reduced by whatever figure Abbeydrive feels it can get away with. And concealed, but barely concealed, behind this decision is of course this certain fact: this rezoning is going to make somebody and somebodies very, very rich indeed.
It is enough to make one hang one's head in despair; yet we have seen this kind of decision bring commuter-ruin to unconsulted communities all around the Leinster area; and if the people of Ballymore want to know what lies ahead of them, they should drop into Celbridge, where similarly excessive development foisted on the local community means that each morning there is a 45minute traffic jam as commuters attempt to leave the town's tiny streets on their way to Dublin.
That is the present which will be Ballymore's future unless this madness is somehow or other stopped; and let me declare now that it doesn't affect me in the least, since it is all happening miles away from me. But it does concern me as a grotesque example of the truly abominable way our planning processes work.
Visual ruin
It is irrelevant that there is absolutely no evidence that there is anything in the least corrupt about the decision to rezone so much land beside such a small village. "Corruption" is not the issue; the issue is that brutally greedy redevelopment has brought visual and cultural ruin to many rural communities around Dublin for years, with very tidy sums indeed being made by those fortunate enough indeed to get decisions which suit their financial interests.
Ballymore is 25 miles from Dublin. Twenty-five miles from London one can find unspoilt villages which have been protected by planners and politicians from the ravages of development. Leinster, it seems, is not so fortunate. Meath, Wicklow, Fingal, Kildare, Louth are now fair game for unscrupulous, predatory and monstrously vulgar development. Carlow, Offaly, Laois will follow. Nobody in government cries stop. The rape goes on: and for this sin will future generations curse us.