The claim that one-off rural houses are costly to maintain is misguided – as their owners pay more for basic services, writes SARAH CAREY
I WAS lifted from a haze of depression and anxiety about the future last week by the letter spat between MEP Marian Harkin and Gerry Sheeran of the Irish Planning Institute on the subject of one-off rural housing. Thank God for such diversions.
Sheeran made familiar arguments regarding the financial burden of one-off rural houses. Since I live in a one-off rural house, I am happily qualified to dispute some of the casual allegations made against us provincial types, whose existence so offends urban liberals, Greens and planners.
The charge is that one-off houses are more expensive to maintain than the residents of cobble-lock communities. If you don’t actually live in a one-off house, the arguments might seem persuasive. It sounds logical to claim that the cost of providing services such as water, sewerage, public lighting, road maintenance and services means that rural residents draw more than their fair share of resources from local authorities and utility companies. We conform to the same tax code, but some get more services than others. Townies might feel quite aggrieved that they effectively subsidise their country cousins.
Not from where I’m sitting. Not only do we cost less, but some of us are doing the subsidising. Every extra one-off house is one less burden on local authorities. Were we ringing up the council demanding that our water pipes be repaired during the cold snap? Do we harass officials because the sewerage system is overloaded? Do we write letters whining about broken lights or blocked drains? No, no and no.
The reason: we provide for and maintain our own infrastructure. When I needed water, I did not casually expect to be linked to leaky mains transporting expensive water that I would promptly waste on enthusiastic toilet flushing. Instead we sent for Nan, the local water diviner, who selected the best site for a well. Then we paid our contractor to dig and line it, and to install pipes (deep enough to prevent freezing in inclement weather), and a plumber to install a pump and the necessary filtration systems. If anything breaks, we call these same people to come fix it.
For sewerage we were required to install a wastewater treatment system. Essentially, it is a concrete box, sealed to prevent leakage or pollution. It uses an anaerobic method to treat the sewage, which works best if you refrain from using bleach, biological washing powder and anti-bacterial cleaning products. So while our urban peers are splashing phosphates down the drain and making a chemical nuisance of themselves, we are a bastion of environmental equilibrium.
A condition of planning permission required us to make a “contribution” to road maintenance. Technically, the rest of you, who also drive on roads, including ours, contribute to road maintenance through your motor tax. I wrote a cheque for around €8,000, and in the five years we’ve lived here, the gravel truck has popped down once or twice and thrown a few shovelfuls into our potholes.
Not that I’m complaining. I don’t see potholes as an affliction, but nature’s way of slowing down cars. While the supposedly economic residents of housing estates demand the construction of expensive ramps to decelerate traffic on their precious avenues, crescents and drives, we cultivate gratitude for neglect. In fact, my cheque probably paid for a few inches of their ramp, which I wouldn’t mind if high-density residents didn’t begrudge my low-density, low-cost life.
And before anyone writes in to complain about car usage, when we drop our little children to school we vie for parking spaces with the occupants of the village’s housing estates. They could walk, but don’t, which to my mind is a greater moral crime than living too far from the school to walk.
Sheeran also mentioned the cost of electricity supply. It does cost more to supply a rural house, so we pay 33 cent per unit, while urban customers pay just 25 cent per unit. We also paid the cost – I can’t find the paperwork, but it was around €1,500 – to connect the house in the first place.
You see the pattern here. We pay the same regular taxes plus a series of upfront costs and ongoing payments for services that urban residents take for granted. In addition, we strive constantly to protect and enhance the environment in which we’re privileged to live.
Another condition of planning, which we happily fulfilled, was to plant only native species of trees around our site, including a lengthy whitethorn hedge and dozens of deciduous trees, from birch to beech to chestnut. When the rain falls, it can drain easily through our grass and pebbles, while in the village it pours off the concreted, patioed, tarmac surfaces, creating dramatic floods.
While planners are infatuated with the Anglo-Saxon world of manor settlements or barren continental landscapes stripped of human activity, our Gaelic inheritance is the quiet, dispersed life where the parish reigns over the imported notion of the high street.
There may be a greater distance between our houses, but our social mix is beautifully enriching when compared to the demographic rigidity of the town, where an address defines a life. No one’s perfect, but our way of life is not merely legitimate but a cornerstone of what people love about Ireland.
I’m sure St Patrick would approve.