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One-off houses: Good or Bad?

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Comments

  • Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 12,467 Mod ✭✭✭✭JupiterKid


    One off rural houses have been a disaster for this country - they have ruined beautiful parts of the countryside and most are ugly, ungainly and utterly unappealing. Ireland IMO still has a storng anti-town/anti-city bias - that is a sign of an immature and parochial society.

    I have no problem with people who work in the country and on the land living in the country. I do have a problem with urban generated one-off housing - they do cost more to service and they create a culture of car dependancy. No other European country tolerates such a lax one off housing planning system than Ireland.

    In the UK or the Netherlands it is nigh on impossible to build a rural one-off house unless you can prove you have connetions to the rural area in question.

    Has anyone also noticed how obesity seems to be even worse in rural Ireland than the cities and towns? One off housing and total car dependancy is your answer.

    Finally, the bligth of one off rural housing has damaged the viability of many of our mid sized towns because until recently there was very little private housing development built in these towns. Why?

    Because most of the private housing was scattered as one off housing in the towns' hinterlands and the only housing built in the towns was social/council houisng which then gave many Irish towns a rough image and bad name - causing more people to want to build one-off rural housing away from these towns - thus a vicious spiral of decline.

    One-off housing has been bad, bad, bad for this country.:(


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    JupiterKid wrote: »
    In the UK or the Netherlands it is nigh on impossible to build a rural one-off house unless you can prove you have connetions to the rural area in question.

    This is true, but it isn't explicable purely on the basis on better planning in those countries. The key is the historical context - specifically industrialisation and urban population growth in the Netherlands and the UK, which meant that there are quite simply far fewer individuals wanting to live in the countryside there; and, second, issues of land ownership:
    By Johann Hari
    Wednesday, 2 February 2005

    Who owns Britain? Most of us would instinctively reply: we do. The British people own the British Isles. This is a democracy, isn't it? But the facts tell a different story. When you look at a map of the British Isles, you are looking not at your home but at a land mass overwhelmingly owned by a tiny aristocratic elite. Extraordinary though it might seem, in the 21st century, 0.6 per cent of the British people own 69 per cent of the land on which we live - and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 19th century.

    When it comes to land ownership, Britain today is a more unequal country than Brazil - where there are regular land riots. We are beaten in the European league tables only by Spain, a country which largely retains the land patterns imposed by General Franco's fascist regime. It's time we realised: this land is not your land, from Land's End to the Scottish Highlands. It is theirs.

    This makes a mockery of the principles our society is supposed to be built on. Very few people defended the idea of hereditary peers - so why should most of the country's land be owned according to hereditary principles? For a system of private property to thrive - and I believe it must, because it is the best way to generate wealth - it has to be legitimate. There must be a relationship between work and reward: if you work hard, you should be rewarded. But most of these landowners have put in no work, and they are given a vast reward: the land on which we live. And - even where wealth has been earned, as in a few cases - nobody has earned this obscene amount of space on a crowded island. There has to be some sense of proportion, or the idea of human equality becomes a bad joke.

    But far from redistributing land, successive British governments have reinforced this inequality by subsidising the richest landowners in the country. For example, a recent New Statesman investigation found that the multi-billionaire Duke of Westminster - who has done nothing to earn his wealth - is entitled to £9.2m in subsidies each year from you, the taxpayer. Kevin Cahill, the author of an award-winning book on land ownership in Britain, explains: "Money is being taken out of your pocket to enhance the assets of the rich, who, in their role as landowners, pay no tax. This is a massive scandal." Yesterday, Tony Blair was talking about weaning poor people in Britain off disability benefit. How about taking the land-owning aristocracy off welfare before we start turning on poor people desperate for their extra £50 a week?

    Only one part of Britain has woken up to this national scandal so far - Scotland. This week, the Highland community of Lochinver is voting on whether they want to buy 40,000 acres of land that currently belongs to the Vestey family, a bunch of staggeringly rich corned beef tycoons. This right was granted to the local community by the Scottish Parliament when it introduced a Land Reform Act in 2003. The legislation abolished the feudal system where tenants were referred to as "vassals" and landowners as "superiors". And in addition to getting rid of the formal trappings of feudalism, the Act made it possible to erode the grip of these predominantly feudal families on Scottish land.

    The new laws are simple. They ensure that whenever a large slice of rural land is placed on the market, the local community has the democratic right to claim it for themselves. If more than 50 per cent of locals vote to take the land, and if they can raise 50 per cent of the price themselves with business plans, the Highland Council (or the relevant local authority) will provide the remaining funds. If the community votes to buy over the next few days, the Vesteys will be legally forbidden to flog the land to the highest bidder. In other words, a transfer of the land from elite to elite will not be allowed.

    In this instance, the Vesteys want to sell, but even if they didn't there is some provision in the legislation for communities to force a "hostile buy-out" if they can demonstrate it is in the public interest. Crofters, for example, can vote to buy and run the land they live and work on even if the landlord refuses to sell.

    This package of land redistribution is even more desperately needed in Scotland than in the rest of Britain: just 103 people own 30 per cent of the entire country. The new laws will very slowly erode this vast inequality over the next century, as more and more communities claim the land for themselves to be run as community trusts or shared property.

    Of course, there has been howling from the Scottish Tories about this "Mugabe-style land grab" and "attack on property rights". True, land redistribution has a bad reputation and a bad history. In the name of stripping land away from a tiny landed elite and giving it to the people, 30 million people died in China. Today, thousands are dying in its name in Zimbabwe, and the issue is threatening to destabilise many parts of South America and even Africa's most successful democracy, South Africa.

    But far from being an argument against the Scottish laws, we should be glad that a peaceful mechanism of redistribution is being pioneered here. Land redistribution is an urgent cause across the world, particularly for the poor - and in Scotland, they are showing how it can be done in a democratic way, without violence. The problem with Robert Mugabe's policy is not - as the right usually implies - with the very idea of redistributing land. When Zimbabwe was established in 1979, just 1 per cent of the population (the white men) owned 60 per cent of the land, including all the most fertile and profitable acres. Most of it had been violently seized just a generation or two before. Does anybody think that was a just or sustainable situation?

    But the problems with Mugabe's model of psycho-redistribution are clear. He is not giving land to ordinary Zimbabweans; he is claiming much of it for himself (under the name of "nationalisation") and giving the rest to a fetid elite of Zanu-PF cronies. His policy has been enforced by armed thugs who have butchered their way across the Zimbabwean countryside.

    But now, peasants and poor people across the world need not look to Mugabe or Mao or other tyrants for a way to take land back from the rich. Instead, they can look to this new kilt-wearing redistribution through the ballot box.

    It could hardly come at a better time. In most countries in the world, land is not being democratised and spread across the population. In fact, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been imposing policies on poor countries that actually increase the concentration of land ownership and make more people into landless peasants. In Colombia, for example, the 0.4 per cent who make up the Colombian elite now owns 61 per cent of the country - an increase of 30 per cent in the past decade. On the IMF's instructions, South Africa still has apartheid-level inequality in land ownership, with just 4 per cent of farmland being redistributed from white to black.

    Has the Scottish model ever been needed more? It is time to take the high road to a more equal Britain - and a more equal world.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...ay-483131.html

    I have to say again, I believe blaming the bungalow blitz on gombeenism and the parish pump is to confuse cause with effect. Gombeenism and cute-hoordom in the planning process, and one-off houses, are only possible because of the land ownership pattern that emerged after independence and the triumph of a rural over an urban Ireland which skipped industrialisation and urban population growth.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 29 gunbarrel


    JupiterKid wrote: »
    One off rural houses have been a disaster for this country - they have ruined beautiful parts of the countryside and most are ugly, ungainly and utterly unappealing. Ireland IMO still has a storng anti-town/anti-city bias - that is a sign of an immature and parochial society.

    To be parochial, you cannot be one-off i.e. there has to be a community. Likewise with a society.

    Any proof to back up your claim of an anti-town, anti-city bias? I await with interest.
    I have no problem with people who work in the country and on the land living in the country. I do have a problem with urban generated one-off housing - they do cost more to service and they create a culture of car dependancy.

    Have you seen the traffic problems in Dublin. Most of those people have public transport available to them and still choose to drive so blaming car dependency on one-off housing is ridiculous.

    No other European country tolerates such a lax one off housing planning system than Ireland.

    You might want to do some research on that claim.
    In the UK or the Netherlands it is nigh on impossible to build a rural one-off house unless you can prove you have connetions to the rural area in question.

    2 of the most over populated countries in Europe, particulary the Netherlands where you have very little rural space on which to build a house.
    Has anyone also noticed how obesity seems to be even worse in rural Ireland than the cities and towns? One off housing and total car dependancy is your answer.

    It gets more insane. Can you provide one shred of evidence for either:

    (a) your claim that obesity is worse in Rural areas?

    (b) your claim that it can be attributed to one-off housing and car dependency?

    Again, I wait with interest.
    Finally, the bligth of one off rural housing has damaged the viability of many of our mid sized towns because until recently there was very little private housing development built in these towns. Why?

    Because most of the private housing was scattered as one off housing in the towns' hinterlands and the only housing built in the towns was social/council houisng which then gave many Irish towns a rough image and bad name - causing more people to want to build one-off rural housing away from these towns - thus a vicious spiral of decline.

    I look forward to reading your evidence for this lot as well. Did you read your comment before you posted it because your argument has more holes than a tramp's y-fronts.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 492 ✭✭rcunning03


    gunbarrel wrote: »


    To be parochial, you cannot be one-off i.e. there has to be a community. Likewise with a society.

    Any proof to back up your claim of an anti-town, anti-city bias? I await with interest.



    Have you seen the traffic problems in Dublin. Most of those people have public transport available to them and still choose to drive so blaming car dependency on one-off housing is ridiculous.




    You might want to do some research on that claim.



    2 of the most over populated countries in Europe, particulary the Netherlands where you have very little rural space on which to build a house.



    It gets more insane. Can you provide one shred of evidence for either:

    (a) your claim that obesity is worse in Rural areas?

    (b) your claim that it can be attributed to one-off housing and car dependency?

    Again, I wait with interest.



    I look forward to reading your evidence for this lot as well. Did you read your comment before you posted it because your argument has more holes than a tramp's y-fronts.

    It's called an opinion. Can you prove what he says is not true? Do you want to him to spend hours researching a post just so everything he says can be backed up.

    What he says is the truth and if you don't think so you prove otherwise.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    ^^ gunbarrel/Gruffalo won't be responding here. Ever.


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 4,917 Mod ✭✭✭✭spacetweek


    I totally agree that many suburbs of Dublin and other cities are often very poorly planned, but even the worst-planned suburb is still more efficient than an area of one-offs - all the houses are connected to the sewerage system, water system, are connected to one set of electricity cables, broadband is available, and there will be a bus route somewhere nearby. In the case of shoebox apartments, it's true that in the 90s they were usually like that but that was because Irish people weren't picky (having usually never lived in one before) and developers got away with it. More recent stuff that I've seen has been of higher quality. There's a learning curve here.

    The community spirit argument is outdated - people don't primarily socialise with their neighbours anymore, friend networks come from the people you work with, went to college with, play sports with, etc. I don't know anyone in my estate in Dublin but I have dozens of friends in other parts of the city. As for life in a rural area, in the case of a one-off with a newcomer living in it (which is usually the case), that person can either get to know the neighbours... or nothing. There's no opportunity to socialise with people you went to college with etc.

    For every sh1te suburb of Dublin, I could point out a great one to you. Similarly for every vibrant rural village there's a ghost town blighted by emigration.
    I'm from the countryside and will return to there as soon as I can get a job at home. The arguments for rural housing costing more in costs is absolute nosense;

    1) Saying it costs more to connect ESB in the rural areas is simply wrong - the ESB wires pass on every road in the countryside and has done for decades, and therefore passes each new house;
    2) Broadband - eircom will only enable broadband lines in areas where they are economically viable and the vast majority of houses in the countryside have no broadband;
    3) Water - people in the countryside actually pay for their water either through their own wells or through a rural water scheme
    4) There is little or no public transport in rural areas and therefore there is no cost to the state for this unlike the vast urban areas
    5) Social services - all social services and hospitals are located in urban areas and ppl in the countryside have to go to these to receive services

    Overall living in the countryside is a much better way of living. I have lived in Dublin for 10 years now and have barely said hello to my neibhours and most of the ppl I know in Dublin are the exact same whereas down the country I know every single of my neighbours.
    I'm confused by your 5 points - 3 of them (2, 4 and 5) are actually reasons not to live in a rural area. You've argued against yourself.

    I'd be OK with people living in 1-offs if they had to pay the full cost of living there - environmental and in terms of the drain on the state. I'd be OK with it because I guarantee you absolutely nobody would do it.

    We need a blanket ban on one-offs, stat. We need to take power away from politicians (who don't know anything about planning) and keep it with county councils. We also need to increase the efficiency of town and city councils, who allow housing to be provided quickly but infrastructure very slowly.

    I'm a Dub and I'm against one offs not because I don't like rural areas. In fact I love all the other towns and cities in Ireland. I'm against one offs because of this - because they're are destroying rural Ireland. Anyone who lives in a one off outside a rural town is destroying that town. I'm against one offs because I want people to stop destroying rural areas.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    By Paul Melia

    Friday October 30 2009

    MORE than 400,000 homeowners will be forced to buy a licence for their septic tank under new laws planned for next year.
    Yesterday, Environment Minister John Gormley said he would introduce a licensing and inspection system for septic tanks, which will affect 440,000 homes across the country, mostly in rural areas.
    The department has not yet decided how much a licence will cost, but in Scotland similar licences cost €82.
    And some homeowners could be forced to replace their tanks if the licensing authority decides they are not working properly and pose a risk to public health.
    Sources said that tanks located on waterlogged sites or with clay soil may have to be replaced at a cost of up to €4,000 per tank.
    The move, which is a commitment in the Renewed Programme for Government, comes after the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that Ireland had broken EU law for failing to enact legislation to deal with domestic wastewater from septic tanks and other treatment systems.
    Pollution
    Homeowners currently have a "duty of care" but, under a new licensing system, a public body -- such as a local authority -- will inspect tanks to ensure they are not causing pollution.
    Fines of up to €5,000 or three months' imprisonment can currently be imposed for not ensuring the wastewater is properly treated. Penalties are likely to be of a similar order under the new system.
    Households not served by public sewers usually depend on septic tank systems to treat and dispose of wastewater.
    A typical tank takes wastewater from a toilet, bath, kitchen and washing machine.
    Heavy solids settle to the bottom where bacteria partially decompose them into sludge, and tanks are pumped to prevent overflowing.
    Excess wastewater is filtered through the soil where it is absorbed. If tanks overflow or are not maintained, they can cause contamination of groundwater, rivers and streams with potentially dangerous bugs, including e-coli.
    Yesterday, Mr Gormley said he would be considering the court's judgment and introducing a licensing system.
    "We know that in far too many instances septic tanks or on-site sewage treatment systems are causing pollution. The absence of a licensing and inspection system is a major weakness in our overall environmental management structures," he said.
    http://www.independent.ie/national-news/440000-must-buy-septic-tank-licence--gormley-1929083.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    Yet again it takes the EU to protect the Irish environment:
    IT will be increasingly difficult to secure planning permission for one-off rural homes that aren’t connected to public sewers, following a judgment of the European Court of Justice yesterday.

    The Luxembourg-based court ruled that Ireland had failed to fulfil its obligations to comply with an EU directive that waste water from septic tanks is recovered and disposed of without endangering human health.

    The ECJ said standards used in granting planning permissions "did not ensure a level of environmental and human health protection as high as that pursued by [the EU] directive".

    During the hearing in the case, the commission heavily criticised Ireland’s track record on environmental protection, especially in relation to the handling of waste from septic tanks. It argued that various Irish environmental laws had not enabled pollution to be reduced in practice. It is estimated there are around 400,000 households in Ireland which rely on septic tanks to collect waste water.

    The commission claimed there were "serious shortcomings" throughout Ireland which were capable of adversely affecting the environment. EU officials claimed such problems were linked to deficiencies in construction, unsuitable siting, insufficient capacities, maintenance and inspection as well as "inactivity" by local authorities.

    However, the commission said the sole exception were by-laws introduced in Co Cavan which had adequately addressed the issue of the disposal of domestic waste waters in the countryside through septic tanks.

    Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/eu-ruling-on-waste-water-hits-permission-for-one-off-housing-104456.html#ixzz0VRvJV5eN
    However, the commission said the sole exception were by-laws introduced in Co Cavan which had adequately addressed the issue of the disposal of domestic waste waters in the countryside through septic tanks.

    Presumably this means that each local authority will be forced to adopt by-laws similar to the Co. Cavan ones.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    I can see this being used as a stick with which to beat the EU. But it's a good judgement.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,110 ✭✭✭KevR


    Flew out of and back into Shannon Airport over the weekend. After reading this thread I paid a lot more attention to one of houses in the countryside. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Ugly box houses dotted all over the place with their ugly tarmaced drives. It's aweful and should never have been allowed to happen.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 7,797 ✭✭✭munchkin_utd


    KevR wrote: »
    Flew out of and back into Shannon Airport over the weekend. After reading this thread I paid a lot more attention to one of houses in the countryside. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Ugly box houses dotted all over the place with their ugly tarmaced drives. It's aweful and should never have been allowed to happen.
    Like that, I took the bus from Derry to cork via Galway there last christmas and you just have to get a sinking feeling when travelling through our countryside seeing what a mess was made over the past 10 years. It was shocking.
    Our tourism agency is pleading for people to come from abroad to holiday in ireland but for what?
    To take a picture of an ugly bungalow with Ben Bulben as the back drop.
    To take a picture of the atlantic ocean framed by a housing estate 10km from the nearest town?
    To go to a seaside town and marvel at all the unoccupied holiday homes? (ok not one off housing but still an irish planning cock up)

    You have to be ashamed of what has been done to the irish countryside.
    EVEN if the houses were somehow to tone into the landscape you wouldnt mind so much, but for some reason the McMansion perched on top of the hill was permitted all over the countryside like some sort of mass produced irish rural southfork.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    Indeed. Large parts of the roadsides on either side of the existing N18 between Galway and Gort are crowded with one-off houses.

    So much so, that this part of the 'countryside' is almost a continuation of Galway's suburban sprawl.

    Every Irish town and city suffers from this and there are large areas of 'rural' Ireland that have become increasingly suburbanised.

    If only Ireland had a proper landscape assessment and protection policy.

    It's no wonder that there are so many insensitively-sited houses in Ireland.

    Research carried out by Heritage Ireland in 2006 "revealed that 68% of Heritage Officers, planners and consultants interviewed had no formal training in LCA [Landscape Character Assessment]", although at least some new landscape classification and protection legislation is on the way.


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭medoc


    spacetweek wrote: »
    We need a blanket ban on one-offs, stat. We need to take power away from politicians (who don't know anything about planning) and keep it with county councils. We also need to increase the efficiency of town and city councils, who allow housing to be provided quickly but infrastructure very slowly.


    I built my own house in the country on our own farm should I have moved into a town away from the farm. I pay for my own water and have a maintained sewage treatment system installed with a contract of maintanance (needed for planning permission). While I totally agree on the blight caused by one off's it was caused mostly by greedy farmers and developers making a quick profit in the last decade. In my area there are a few houses lived in by people who i dont know and never see, I know most of them are from dublin . Propper planning which when applied should stop this and only allow local people who need and want to stay in the area as is now the case in offaly.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    Here's a picture I took of Gweedore in May 2008. Total dispersal, making any provision of communal services quite difficult.
    One_off_housing_in_Donegal.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,110 ✭✭✭KevR


    That picture really shows the extent of it. Will show this to anyone who doesn't agree that one off houses have ruined the countryside.


    I wonder if there are many locations in Ireland where you could look around you in every direction and be able to see nothing but untouched countryside? Very few I would say..


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,348 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    medoc wrote: »
    I built my own house in the country on our own farm should I have moved into a town away from the farm.

    I know it is harsh, but that is how it works in much of Europe. In France for instance, most farmers live in their local village and commute to the farm. The reason for this is improved services in the village, good broadband, easy access to shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    Furet wrote: »
    Here's a picture I took of Gweedore in May 2008. Total dispersal, making any provision of communal services quite difficult.
    One_off_housing_in_Donegal.jpg

    Truly shocking. Have a look at this map and you'll see the amount of one-off housing in the vicinity of Tralee:

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=62263598&postcount=3

    A close look at a map of any town in Ireland will show a similar pattern.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    And that map of Tralee is probably several years out of date!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,010 ✭✭✭Tech3


    Furet wrote: »
    And that map of Tralee is probably several years out of date!

    Yeah its well out of date! Manor west development isint shown on the map which is why the N21 point of the bypass swings out further west to avoid this.

    Probably the worst I've seen of one off housing is along the N17 area from Tuam to Galway on the eastern side. Truly shocking!


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    tech2 wrote: »
    Yeah its well out of date! Manor west development isint shown on the map which is why the N21 point of the bypass swings out further west to avoid this.

    Probably the worst I've seen of one off housing is along the N17 area from Tuam to Galway on the eastern side. Truly shocking!

    Some county councils are worse than others when it comes to giving planning permission for one-off housing.

    Galway County Council has got to be one of the worst in the country.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Truely shocking.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Furet wrote: »
    Here's a picture I took of Gweedore in May 2008. Total dispersal, making any provision of communal services quite difficult.
    One_off_housing_in_Donegal.jpg
    That photo is disgusting. Oh my God, what have they done?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 587 ✭✭✭Dum_Dum


    Some county councils are worse than others when it comes to giving planning permission for one-off housing.

    Galway County Council has got to be one of the worst in the country.

    So is Waterford County Council in the area around the City. However, parts of Wexford can look quite sparse?


    Are such developments categorised and are figures available on a county-by-county basis?


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,282 ✭✭✭westtip


    Furet I have just read this thread and the views were very much to be expected; the article you posted in post 20 on this thread was the best piece I have read on one off housing in a long time; for those that haven't read it I recommend scrolling back.

    The arguments about rural one off housing maintaining communities has two sides, my greatest fear though is not the sense of community they create but th sense of isolation.

    A typical pattern for building rural one off houses(ROFH's) is for a couple maybe with a family perhaps not yet - but they are typically built for families - which is good - its good to see people with families living in rural ireland; however it is the impact of the houses we build - huge great big things with their own septic tanks etc etc, and then maybe 2 or 3 children come along - and the norm is not to go beyond 3 kids these days. So we have gone from having tiny cottages and town houses with 14 kids in to barracks containing at most 5 people. The children grow up in splendid isolation - they don't have big families to play with they don't have the kids next door, they have to get in a car to go for "play dates" or to GAA or swimming or school. We can't let them cycle or walk to school because its too dangerous (look at those poor cats in Castlebar - see post 20), and then the kids grow up and the parents become a taxi service and then the go to college and then they leave - because leaving rural communities is a pattern that exists globally, there is no shame in leaving a community to go and set up life elsewhere - it shows ambition and is natural. The issue is what will we be left with in 20 or 30 years time - A lot of very big houses occupied by a lot of old people - some living on their own some with their spouses but nevertheless at the wrong end of the age spectrum. The houses will be unsaleable, and they will have outlived their usefullness.

    Now we have a problem. There are a lot of ROFH's out there - they are not going to go away and they can't be knocked down; we do need to limit the stock level and not allow it to increase exponentially.

    The planning rules do need to become more stingent - but the issue of how do we address and fix what we have created also needs to be looked at.

    I think one of the biggest issues for ROFHs is connectivity - and I am not talking roads here. Houses need to be connected - by footpaths. - Now I am not necessarily talking about ripping up the side of the road and laying footpaths alongside every boreen - no we need to look at how we can connect the entire coutryside with a network of footpaths away from the roads - and for this we need the co-operation of farmers.

    We all know how opposed the IFU really is to access to the land for walking - but on the other hand they want to allow every farmer to build a house for his/her daughter/son. Well here is a thought - no plans for ROFH should be conisidered unless it can be connected to its nearest ROFH by a footpath - now that footpath may run on the other side of the stone wall from the road -which the house is on (ie through the field), but it has to be in place.

    If Local Area Plans paid more heed to footpath and cycling connectivity between ROFHs they might develop a new way of social sustainability into the future for ROFHs - children need to be able to walk and cyle to their neighbors, to their schools and to their grannies. We are in the amazing situation when a farmer could build an ROFH for his son/daughter half a mile from the family homestead - but the only way his 8 9 or 10 year old grandchildren can visit him and his wife is if they are put in a car and driven there. Now imagine if the planning condition had said along the road that connects your two houses you must put in a footpath - and in order to sustain the character of rural ireland this footpath must be the other side of the stone wall on the road that has been there for generations and by the way you are not going to be paid some stupid amount of money for this wee strip of land - and public access to this pathm now if this had been the case with all ROFHs we would now have a network of paths and cycleways across the coutry and what would that have done to solve rural isolation?

    Joined up one off rural housing = joined up thinking = joined up communities = social interaction = less car dependency = less road deaths of pedestrians = fitter healthier nation = less heart disease = more joie d'vivre. = a lot more living.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    Some of the disadvantages of rural one-off housing:

    1. visual pollution of the landscape

    2. light pollution

    3. pollution from septic tanks

    4. air pollution: most residents of these houses use cars as their primary means of travel

    5. increase in cost of providing services.

    Almost all services provided to these one-off houses, whether provided by state or private enterprise are more costly to provide, because of their dispersed nature, than the cost of supplying services to houses in an urban setting.

    Look at the picture supplied by Furet of housing near Gweedore in Co. Donegal.

    How many extra kilometres of road is it necessary to maintain to serve these houses compared to the amount that would be needed if they were in an urban setting?

    How many extra kilometres of electricity cabling is it necessary to instal and maintain compared to the amount that would be needed if they were in an urban setting?

    How many extra kilometres must school buses/bin lorries/post office vans/delivery trucks/repair and maintenance vehicles etc travel each year to service these houses because of their dispersed nature?

    Their dispersed nature also means that the emergency services have further to travel - the extra time required has probably led to people dying.

    This extra travel doesn't just add to the costs of providing services, it also contributes to extra pollution.

    On top of this, the residents of these houses must travel extra distances to commute to work, to school/college, to access services, to attend events, to shop, to socialise and so on.

    All of this extra travel adds to extra strain on the road network (and means that instead of maintaining a shorter road network to higher standards, Ireland has to maintain a very extensive road network with lower standards) and adds to pollution and accident rates.


  • Registered Users Posts: 19,015 ✭✭✭✭murphaph


    Some of the same whingebags who bemoan the loss of tourism to rural ireland (and sometimes go so far as to blame 'Dublin') are the staunchest advocates of this bungalow blitz, which has destroyed vast areas of visual amenity.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 624 ✭✭✭Aidan1


    5. increase in cost of providing services.

    Good post, but this one cannot be overstated. The additional cost of servicing these one off houses with everything that is expected of the State is huge. In some cases the costs of these services are concealed within Public Service Obligations (or Universal SOs), like in Electricity Supply, Telecoms or Postal Services. In others they are more explicit. Rural public transport, education, health care - in fact pretty much all services are made more expensive by dispersed populations. This applies to business also - they have to travel more and incur more costs (and other inefficiencies in terms of time) to serve the same number of customers as competitors in urban areas. Both they and the consumers they serve are put at a dramatic disadvantage by the settlement geography.

    This is particular clear when you look at future services - it is a practical impossibility to get FTTH to all of these houses, the costs rule it out. And while FTTH might be relatively doable in the 4 cities of any scale (and quite cheap in these cases also because many of them are already ducted), the fact that a large proportion of the electorate will never be able to access it makes this politically very difficult.

    But the killer is going to be transport costs in future. There is little point in making houses hugely more energy efficient, and shifting increasingly towards renewable generation, if a very large proportion of the population will still need to use very large quantities of energy every day just to go about their business. This dispersed housing pattern is largely responsible for our disproportionately large consumption of transport fuel per head. It also means that people living in these houses are hugely vulnerable to oil price spikes. Moreover, this would bad enough if they were affected in this way, but the record shows that this dispersed population will run straight to Government to support their way of life, to the detriment of the general tax payer.

    Simple solution - focus national growth on the three (or four at a push) cities outside of Dublin, but focus growth on a local level - such as it exists - into designated villages and towns, ideally those already possessing a critical mass of population to ensure services. The 'ring town' concept pushed by Cork County Council in the CASP is a great example of what this can achieve if done right (although ideally it wouldn't be undermined overnight by a Minister for the Environment relaxing the planning regs, as happened in 2001/2).


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,663 ✭✭✭serfboard


    Aidan1 wrote: »
    Simple solution - focus national growth on the three (or four at a push) cities outside of Dublin, but focus growth on a local level - such as it exists - into designated villages and towns, ideally those already possessing a critical mass of population to ensure services. The 'ring town' concept pushed by Cork County Council in the CASP is a great example of what this can achieve if done right (although ideally it wouldn't be undermined overnight by a Minister for the Environment relaxing the planning regs, as happened in 2001/2).

    I think what we should do is to keep voting Fianna Fail back in - we can rely on them to do what's best for the nation.

    Insanity: Constantly repeating the same pattern and expecting a different result.


  • Registered Users Posts: 962 ✭✭✭medoc


    I'm at work posting this (yes i'm a part time farmer) via mobile and cant quote some of the posts.

    I read all of the contributions and cant disagree with any of the points regarding bungalow blight. I still feel no shame for building my own house on my own land and would fight for the right of any one in my position to do the same. Offaly county council imposed conditions on my planning, had to build house in keeping with the style of the area, had to use natural slate, no dormer windows etc, had to maintain the natural road side boundry. I also had to install a treatment system for my house and it had to be located in a part of the site out of the view of the main road. Believe me if all the houses in my area had to go through that the area would have been much improved.

    Though planning requirements and a local relationship and need should be enforced. A lot of the sites sold in the locality in the last 5 years went to outsiders but this is now not happening as the council enforce the local need rule.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 4,282 ✭✭✭westtip


    serfboard wrote: »
    I think what we should do is to keep voting Fianna Fail back in - we can rely on them to do what's best for the nation.

    Insanity: Constantly repeating the same pattern and expecting a different result.

    Serf FF FG I don't think it will make any difference to the average TD/councillor in the counties most affected; all the same gombeens. We need to separate our legislative assembly from local influences - so that our legislators do not answer to the parish pump, Da People may not like it - but do you know what sometimes local democracy just doesn't work.
    medoc wrote: »
    I'm at work posting this (yes i'm a part time farmer) via mobile and cant quote some of the posts.

    I read all of the contributions and cant disagree with any of the points regarding bungalow blight. I still feel no shame for building my own house on my own land and would fight for the right of any one in my position to do the same. Offaly county council imposed conditions on my planning, had to build house in keeping with the style of the area, had to use natural slate, no dormer windows etc, had to maintain the natural road side boundry. I also had to install a treatment system for my house and it had to be located in a part of the site out of the view of the main road. Believe me if all the houses in my area had to go through that the area would have been much improved.

    Though planning requirements and a local relationship and need should be enforced. A lot of the sites sold in the locality in the last 5 years went to outsiders but this is now not happening as the council enforce the local need rule.

    If what you say about Offaly is true then why can't we have some level of consistency across the country, Sligo is full of pop up mansions/barracks throughout the county that are so incongruous it is untrue, your post is a good one and very informative - but as I said above in a post a few posts back - we do now need to address the mess that has been created - what can we now do to make these one offs places fit to live in - and what restrictions can we place on future one offs? Solving the social problem that has been created needs to be addressed - and believe me this is every bit as much a social problem as well as an infrastrutural/environmental issue. There really is a need for direction from government on this matter - will we get it - I doubt it.


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