"Green" policies are destroying this country

F' the EPA and the other dipsh​​it civil service tax sponges. These were the geniuses who said nothing about Gormley's forcing everyone into diesels instead of petrol driven vehicles which emit water vapour and plant food. Diesel exhaust contains the most potent carcinogen ever discovered, in addition to NO, which I knew when the EPA apparently didn't. The bleeps to this day, still haven't reversed the fuel excise disparity that favours diesel - which normally should be a lot more expensive than petrol because when you refine a barrel of oil you get far more petrol than diesel.

Nice attempt at a dodge. You can't answer the question because there isn't a meaningful answer. Your precious civil servants have it in for septic tanks. Not hard to wage war on something when you are the ones setting the standards. A 100% inspection failure rate is easily achieved. It is believed that there is more bacteria in the soil and rocks of the planet than there is life above ground. They eventually digest everything, even oil spills. There were no shocking consequences in that report, apart from the headline grabbing inspection failure, because there likely aren't any. Food for bacteria, shock horror. I have no doubt there are occasionally real problems, but the real problems from civil servant managed waste treatment and sewage systems are vastly worse.

You could entirely do away with them and up the cost for one-off house builders by requiring holding tanks that are pumped out by a tanker regularly, and people would install them and pay up. Unnecessary, though.

A connection charge is levied for electricity. The poles and infrastructure are already there because of the need posed by farms, just as they are in towns. After the connection that's it. The ESB haven't touched a thing on my property since the initial connection two decades ago. I have, however paid 20 years of vat on the electricity consumed together with the rural network maintenance levy. As per the photo I posted, the real costs of rural networks are posed by farms and their commercial scale needs.

Same for your BS about rural road maintenance - all the damage is caused by heavy commercial vehicle traffic connected with agriculture and none by cars, effectively. This one is such a provable egregious lie, and yet your precious civil servants still have the neck to attempt to peddle it.

Now it's the non-issue of septic tanks. Next I'm sure you will take a crack at water supply. What will the next spoof be; some report by a lefty green academic that the one off houses are lowering the water table because of insufficient rainfall in this country, threatening plans to pipe water from Lough Derg to meet the needs of all the socialist civil servants living cheek by jowl in Dublin and an axe to grind.

The made up excuses are all addressable: sealed pumped waste tanks, stand alone off-grid solar/wind power systems, satellite broadband. These would eliminate all the arguments but more would be invented because imagined costs isn't the real issue, it's envy and begrudgery. Pity there isn't a healthy export market for socialist begrudgery, this country could earn a fortune.

I'm originally from Australia. This locals only and socially/officially driven mania with controlling and dictating where people live is really foreign and weird - in a bad way. It doesn't happen in Australia. Ever hear complaints from Irish emigrants that they can't buy a house near the beach, despite having the money, because all the near/on beach land and housing is reserved for locals? Does this happen in the US, Canada, France? It's a peculiarly Irish mental disease - and that's what I think it is - it's not normal, it's wholly aberrant and unhealthy.

It's so f'd up the EU have even warned Ireland about it:

"THE controversial 'locals only' and 'must speak Irish' planning rules have been challenged by the EU as illegal and discriminatory.

A landmark EU ruling yesterday will test the Fianna Fail/Greens coalition as the parties are poles apart on the issue of one-off houses in the countryside.

The move will put serious pressure on 22 local authorities to abandon their 'locals only' policies when granting planning permissions.

The EU ordered Ireland to explain why the 22 authorities discriminate in favour of local people." https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/locals-only-planning-rule-illegal-and-discriminatory-says-eu-26300271.html

But hey, knock yourself out with increasing the exclusivity and attraction of my rural one-off properties and driving up the value of my assets, I'm currently in the process of offloading them so I can escape. 

Well, a lot of people want to be rich enough not to have to work too. And a lot of people want to have fun everyday.

One-off housing is a big problem in dealing with climate change. No other country in the world has the problems we have in this regard, because they promote villages, towns and cities as the places to live. It is amazing the number of people who think Ireland can somehow be different in this and other ways.

"Interesting little titbit. 42% of the population of Ireland lives rurally"

"26 percent of dwellings are one offs, not 42 percent as you claim. (I have the link to the stat, but I usually wait for smartypants"

There are 3 adults living in my one-off dwelling.

Urbanites who somehow believe that by ultimately removing everybody off the land in rural areas, including farmers, is somehow going to benefit the climate, society, mother nature and their wallets, is living in a current dreamland. A dreamland that would turn into nightmare land pretty quickly if they somehow got what they wished for.

If you want to remove one off housing from the entirety of the rural landscape, just like the current Minister for the Environment and Communications would like to see himself, then that has to ultimately effect the vast majority of the landowners of the rural landscape who are Agricultural farmers and are the current stewards of said land. You want them to get off the land, fair enough, but who are they going to hand it over to? Who is going to be in the position to purchase it?

Continental Europe is in no way comparable to the island of Ireland in this matter. You are not dealing like for like, the two histories of the social stewardship of the rural landscape are in no way comparable, the sizes of the nations are in no way comparable. And no the continental landscape is not a hellscape at the current moment, but if you sold it off to multinational corporations who would just ranch the hell out of it, you wouldn't be long seeing that hellscape come to fruition, both environmentally and economically.

Well, the said minister I referenced most certainly did cuz, he said he wants the re-introduction of wild Wolves on this tiny island. Wild Wolves. He said that. You know how many miles wild WOLVES travel over the space of 24hrs and the amount of their chosen prey they can kill in that 24hrs? You mightn't, fair enough, but that guy is the Minister for the ENVIRONMENT, so its in his remit to know, and I'm sure he does. So if he gets what he wants, he obviously doesn't want farmers and their pesky livestock taking up the room for his precious wolves, now does he? Or is it he doesn't know what he's talking about in regard to anything, including that fantastic doozie he came out with?

My son has aspergers and may well be unemployable in a normal organisation, so somewhere with a functioning economy is irrelevant. Anyway, he is a game developer and I'm hoping he will one day make some money at that, so he works from home.

The way it works on the tank inspection is if you have a nice VAT receipt for a recent emptying, so long as the poo tax is paid they don't care if the poo is dumped in the middle of the road