Like others of my trade, I have spent some of the last few weeks travelling around the new housing estates of Meath and Kildare, soon to vote in byelections.
Frankly, one can only despair.
Faced with such an existence, and the prospect of four-hour daily commutes into Dublin, I would require vodka or Valium, or both, to get through the week.
The estates have multiplied virus-like in recent years, and services are often non-existent.
Yet we look on as if all of this has happened because of some law of nature that is not amenable to the hand of man. Such is not the case.
Dublin's sprawl has been allowed to happen because of greed, a refusal to learn basic lessons from the past and, at times, what can only be described as stupidity of the highest order.
Developers are happy to cram houses on to sites. Can anyone blame them for making outrageous profits since few others seem to be working in the public interest? Planners and councillors have failed miserably. None of this is rocket science. Young couples have children. Children need to go to creches and primary school, they need to play. They will, in time, need to go to secondary school.
The lives that people are forced to lead in parts of Meath and Kildare because of this appalling administration, lack of foresight and hunger for Mammon are simply unbelievable.
One creche in Meath opens at 5.45am to take its first arrivals of the day from sleep-deprived parents, who then have to struggle to get into the capital.
Imagine such a day.
One stumbles out of bed at 5am, or before, having probably had only a few hours' sleep, to get toddlers ready for a day in the care of others. Then drives on clogged-up roads to do a day's work, only to return home on equally gridlocked roads to begin the cycle once again.
Can anyone in their right minds believe that this is sustainable, that marriages and relationships will not sunder, that communities will not fail to grow, that children will not be poorly brought up? Are we mad enough to believe that there will not be serious social consequences flowing from this, and soon.
In Navan, a woman spoke of spending €1,900 a month on childcare for her two children, effectively consuming the best part of her salary. Another gets up at 6am to go to work, leaving her husband to prepare their two tots for the creche, before he, too, leaves for work in Dublin.
Because of his late departure he rarely gets home from work before 10pm, by which time his wife has gone to bed and the couple rarely speak face-to-face from Monday to Friday.
Often, exhausted couples return to badly-built homes, where the sound of next door's baby crying, or in one bizarre case where the sound of frying can be heard through paper-thin walls.
The byelections have been useful if only because they have brought some of the Cabinet, mostly middle-aged and male, face to face with the difficulties of modern-day living. One can often be surprised how out of touch people can get once their own children are reared, their own house is bought. They hear the complaints, but they do not really understand.
Some years ago, for instance, the Department of the Environment produced new rules to put more houses and apartments on patches of land in a bid to curb Dublin's sprawl.
This is the same Government department that still allows breeze-blocks to be used in construction.
This is the same Government department that has failed to take proper action against builders responsible for the deaths of workers, leaving it to insurance companies worried about liability claims to force higher standards on sites.
This is the same Government department that is already showing signs that it will fail properly to implement new EU energy-efficiency rules.
This is the same Government department that has failed to enforce existing building standards, themselves woefully inadequate.
Following the glossy presentation of the new high-density rules, the then minister, Noel Dempsey, was asked what he had done to improve building standards. Both he and his officials looked on uncomprehendingly.
Surely, if more people are put living in ever-closer proximity they are more likely to be irritated, frustrated, upset by poor-quality building.
Surely walls should be walls, not Kleenex, minister?
Ho, ho, ho, they chortled. You must be having problems, they chorused.
But, minister and officials, you must all live in bungalows, he was asked.
They did.
How could they know what it is like to have a stereo blast through their wall at 3am, or be woken by next door's alarm clock at 7.30am?
If you have not experienced it, you do not know what it is like.
Yet most people in Ireland who have bought homes in estates in recent years do know what it is like, with the exception perhaps of those who can afford to buy at the top of the market - or build a bungalow.
A third of the country's homes have been built in the last seven years. Think about it. Last year, 80,000 homes were built.
Politicians and the Department of the Environment claim this as a vindication of their policies. It is, but only partly. Numbers alone are not enough if the quality is awful.
Senior politicians should be forced to spend time in some of the appalling developments allowed on Dublin's city quays over the last decade. A few disturbed nights' sleep would not be long softening their cough.