Sir, - Adrian Kenny (May 26th) can be assured that there are other opinions on the changes overtaking our countryside.
In 1841 there were over 900,000 agricultural holdings in Ireland. By 1939 the number had declined to over 400,000. It is now a little over 100,000 and the number will be 40,000 by the year 2010 - the majority part-time.
In the meantime, the population of Dublin and other major centres continues to grow. The population of the greater Dublin area has grown from 304,000 in 1911 to over 1 million now and, if present trends continue, it will be over 2 million in 20 years' time.
One of our major national problems is the depopulation of the countryside, the result of emigration, unemployment, the automation of agriculture and distribution. If present trends continue, our remaining farmers will be living in a depressed countryside of deserted villages with no young people or social life, with an increasingly substandard and uneconomic infrastructure - empty schools, post offices, dispensaries and churches.
A democratic government in a free country should not dictate to us its citizens where they should live, but should recognise what people want and guide them by fiscal and other incentives to achieve balanced development, avoiding the excessive growth of Dublin and other major centres, and on the other hand avoiding the desertion and desolation of the countryside. In my view a countryside sprinkled with homes is much more beautiful and viable than an empty landscape.
It is currently fashionable and politically correct to talk about "Bungalow Blitz", but views about housing are really matters of opinion, and I do not accept that the opinions of urban based "experts" are any better than my opinion or the opinions of 20,000 other citizens who decided last year to build their homes outside cities and towns.
Some 160 years ago we had a rural population in excess of five million in what is now the Republic. Thanks to the ESB's Rural Electrification scheme, to the thousands of group water schemes, to our excellent system of rural national schools and to our extensive rural network of tarred roads we already have a good, underutilised rural infrastructure which could service a much higher population than at present without major government investments.
In spite of active obstruction from planning authorities, 20,000 free citizens built homes in the countryside last year. Many more would have done the same were it not for the opposition of officialdom. We don't have to be all stacked up on top of each other like the Belgians, with 331 people per square km, or the Germans with 229, or the Dutch with 378, or the British with 239. We are prepared to put up with lower standards of services in order to be able to enjoy the freedom of our countryside. We are only 51 per square km in Ireland. In a free country we should be able to continue to make a free choice. - Yours, etc.,
Cathal Mac Gabhann, Na Fabhrai Maola Thoir, Bearna, Gaillimh.