Sir, - Following on from the recent letters to your newspaper on rural development, there is another aspect I should like to raise which I consider to be even more serious than bad planning in the Irish countryside. It is the seemingly deliberate destruction of the old vernacular houses - be they cottages or crofts - throughout rural Ireland, but particularly on the Atlantic fringes.
Such old rural dwellings are still disappearing at an alarming rate month by month in a process encouraged by planning policies which seem to see no worth in them, as to my knowledge often the only way to achieve planning permission for a modern dwelling in scenic parts of the rural west and north-west is to undertake to demolish an existing old building and then build on its site. Thus, even as I write, old rural buildings which fit so naturally into the Irish rural landscape are being pulled down to make way for "bungalow blitz" replacements or worse. Yet such old buildings, with official Government encouragement, could so easily, with modern techniques, be preserved and be brought up to modern standards, as is done in most other European countries.
I have seen this phenomenon sweeping parts of rural Co Donegal which I know well. When I bought my old "croft" some 30 years ago there (sadly now one of the few examples left in my area), whitewashed vernacular buildings, roofed in the aesthetically-pleasing, locally-mined slates, were everywhere to be seen and were being lived in. Now hardly any remain. Most have been bulldozed, with the full approval - and indeed encouragement - of officialdom to make a "site" for what is often a modern monstrosity, or have been left to decay in the background of the a house, possibly as an extra cattle byre on a farm.
This "policy" (if such it can be called) must be reversed immediately to save what few examples of traditional vernacular buildings still remain in the scenic parts of Ireland. Ironically, in my experience it is often non-national "blow-ins" who appreciate this wonderful part of the Irish heritage and are restoring such old buildings in the traditional style. Unless something positive is done about this problem at a high official level - and quickly - it is bound to have an affect on tourism. For once foreign tourists find that the cottages which still feature on postcards hardly now exist in Ireland, they may well decide not to come back.
As with the Irish donkey, the time is fast approaching when the only way a tourist can see a traditional Irish cottage is to buy a postcard! - Yours, etc.,
Dr Clive R. Symmons, Macetown, Tara, Co Meath.