Sir, - Frank McDonald's report on the holiday home sprawl that was once Courtown, Co Wexford, should make salutary reading for residents in all other similarly designated coastal villages (News Features, June 19th). It is evident that the tax relief scheme initiated by the Coalition government of 1996 (and put in place by the leader of the socialist (sic) partner of that triumvirate), kick-started the cynical abuse by moneyed speculators which resulted in the degradation of a once beautiful and peaceful village.
The article, which makes for sad reading indeed, goes on to highlight how the destruction was facilitated by the local county council, for reasons presumably of realpolitik: local employment, massive increases in land value, etc.
So who are the real losers amid these wonderful material gains? Well, apart from the obliteration of the natural environment mentioned above, the inevitable exclusion of the next generation of local people from the housing market (a form of economic class cleansing, it might be argued), and the creation of a vast and sterile ghost town for 10 months of every year, everything, of course, is hunky-dory.
"The building of holiday homes," some wise man once observed, "is the most destructive form of tourism." I will leave it for readers of your good newspaper interested enough and energised enough to make up their own minds, and maybe even act accordingly. - Yours, etc., K. P. O' Neill, RSA,
FIBD, Nemestown, Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford.