Ardee, Termonfeckin, Johnstown, Ballymore Eustace, Vicarstown: one by one the villages of Leinster have been targeted for major development, with the twin goals of transforming them into socially dead commuter dormitories and meanwhile enriching those who have destroyed them. In every case, local planning authorities have yielded to the demands of developers, even though the communities themselves were up in arms about the proposed ravishment. In two places, Ballymore Eustace and Vicarstown, An Bord Pleanala granted reprieves by upholding appeals against the planning permissions, for the time being.
But it is only for the time being. In Ballymore for sure, the developer is making fresh proposals which in the short term would, if successful, turn the village into a small town, and another developer is proposing to build an industrial estate there in return for providing a sports field.
Exhausting business
Ballymore - which I live three miles from, so I have a particular interest in it - has a wonderful community spirit, but those who have led the fight against transforming an affable village into a busy town with commuter suburbs and factories, both generating huge amounts of traffic, have lives to live. Fighting these fights is an exhausting business, with the certain knowledge that each battle will be followed by another battle, with the developer seemingly always getting the backing of the local council.
In the case of Ballymore, planning permission was sought for a perfectly ludicrous development on the far side of the village from the main Dublin road, which would have multiplied the population fourfold, created huge traffic jams in the village square every morning and evening, and caused potentially lethal tailbacks for right-turning vehicles in the evening on the N81. Furthermore, it would have overwhelmed all local resources - educational, water, sewerage, water and roads.
This proposal was so preposterous that local officials vehemently denounced it, strongly recommending that it be rejected; yet planning permission was nonetheless given. Other communities might have buckled under the weight of such idiocy, but Ballymore did not, and it took its battle - at huge cost - to An Bord Pleanala, and won. But barely do local community leaders wake up the morning after a victory than they see the developers' forces gathering on the skyline again, and they know full well that they must do battle again, and again, and again.
People have to live somewhere, is the argument; and so they must. But that is no argument for transforming charming places such as Termon feckin into Stillorgan, and Ardee into Castleknock, or making a tourist village like Ballymore into an industrial estate through which lorries rumble all day. It is not as if building and growth are not occurring in these places anyway; they are, organically and manageably. So why can we almost rely on those who have the professional and legal power to safeguard these communities to do the very opposite?
Western seaboard
We worry about the short-term consequences to our tourist industry from foot-and-mouth, yet blithely set about the long-term destruction of the very beauty which makes this country worth visiting. Almost the entire length of the western seaboard has become a parody of bungalow bliss. From Malin to Mizzen, from Bloody Foreland to Bantry Bay, insane tax-breaks have created brutally insensitive suburbs which are deserted for most of the year. Achill - to my mind the most wonderful part of the west, unbearably beautiful, awesomely wild - has been ruined by awful holiday homes.
In broad sweep and little detail, our planning is tragically bad. I note with weary resignation that Fingal County Council has - of course - given planning permission for the destruction of the St Lawrence Hotel in Howth, as if it were just another building. It is not. It is the heart and soul of Howth. Lord knows, Howth has suffered enough from vile planning in the past, from the building of suburbs where wilderness should have been retained, to the destruction of the old electric tram system - and that wicked act of vandalism in itself was the work of a deranged madman, who should be yearly cursed in an ecumenical service. The proposed demolition of the old St Laurence Hotel merits a comparable anathema. For that hotel marked Howth out as the great ferryport which once served Dublin, in the days before the harbour was erected at Dun Laoghaire. Its position on the seafront establishes the town's character; but modern planners, alas, seem unable to differentiate between character and caricature.
Lusitania
Howth, Achill, and the Old Head of Kinsale: do promontories bring the worst out of planners? The Old Head is not merely one of the most wonderful peninsulas in Ireland, but a vital place in world history. The brutal killing of 1,200 civilian passengers on the Lusitania just off the head by U 20 in May 1915 helped ultimately to bring the US into the Great War.
It would make a most wonderful national park. For in addition to being a perfect home for a museum to the Lusitania, and a memorial to the unfortunates murdered in the waters nearby, the Old Head is one of the avian paradises of Ireland. But instead the dead go unremembered, and walkers are prohibited: the paradise is now confined to golfers, a species for whom birds are merely scores, and history golf games of long ago. The fate of the Old Head is witlessness become tragic art form.