Sir – JJ Power (June 2nd) exemplifies how a common-sense debate on the “rural housing” issue has proved so consistently elusive.
Mr Power references research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on rural-versus-urban quality of life in Britain. Unlike Ireland, Britain operates a highly restrictive regime on dispersed housing in the open countryside, electing instead to nucleate its rural population around its network of rural hamlets, villages and towns. “Rural” in the British context is not readily comparable to the Irish context.
Interestingly Mr Power does not reference further research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which found the cost of rural living is 20 per cent higher and likely to become increasingly unsustainable for all but higher income families. Research in Ireland by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice in 2010 made similar findings.
The emotive and polarised debate on this issue is constantly framed as one of two extremes – idyllic quality of life in the open countryside versus densely populated urban efficiency. There is of course a middle ground, which was among the key policy recommendations of the most recent major study published by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 and entitled “Sustainable Rural Development – Managing Housing in the Countryside”. Ireland too is endowed with a rich network of rural villages and small historic towns.
A careful policy of small-scale nucleation through the planned provision by local authorities of self-build serviced sites would deliver an equally high-quality rural lifestyle; help to support efficiently local businesses, employment and services, such as rural pubs, post offices, schools, broadband and public transport provision; and insulate rural dwellers against ever-rising transport fuel costs and septic tank charges.
Crucially, such a policy would help allow local people to live and work close to the area where they grew up and guard against the looming major problem of an aging population and rural isolation.
Unfortunately far-sighted policies to help deliver a vibrant and thriving rural Ireland have been persistently eschewed in favour of a politically opportunistic, ad hoc dispersed settlement pattern. This legacy will severely impede any initiatives to provide local employment opportunities and maintain high-quality services in rural areas. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – If we are to carry Sean Byrne’s economic theories to their logical conclusion (Opinion, May 28th), should we not require city dwellers to live within a certain distance of their workplace, and also ban out-of-town shopping centres, so as to minimise urban transport costs? Perhaps we should also move residents of run-down city areas to one-off houses in the country; this would eliminate the costs of urban regeneration, and simultaneously reduce the cost per head of providing services in rural areas by spreading the fixed costs over more people! – Yours, etc,