"Green" policies are destroying this country

Do you need an A&E department on your doorstep? And even if you wanted one, do you think it's the HSE's job to provide it even though they are responsible for the quality of care across the entire system.

I'd recommend reading the HSE's plan for major and minor trauma centres. Everyone will be served, even peripheral areas (though it's likely a bellyache for you that it's not in your back garden).

It's not a Lidl, excellent world class care costs sh*tloads of money you don't get to have one in every two bit town 15km apart because that's not reality.

There are costs to living in peripheral areas away from communities. Once again, the 21st century doesn't come to you just because you want it and have written to your TD, this sh*t needs to be paid for and the HSE has to think of everyone, not just people living down a boreen and thought there would be no drawbacks to doing so.

Nonsense. Someone was trying to make the case that an A&E trauma center is an essential service to live in a town.

This is balderdash.

Rural Ireland is dying because of dispersed settlement patterns and people sitting in their cars to drive to the nearest relatively large population centre.

This the cold hard reality. You're killing what you say you love, and plug your ears when people try to clue you in to it.

People advocating this pattern of settlement are driving a nail in the coffin of rural communities with every isolated McMansion they build and endorse. It's time to come home to reality.

Le sigh. If a critical mass of people live in a village or within reasonable proximity to a village. The economic life of a village increases, post offices become sustainable, cafes become more frequented, SuperValu (for instance) have a business case to open a large store. Footfall.

There is no footfall in a boreen.

I'm trying to figure out if that was a serious question you just posed.

Already covered in the thread (you said you've read it). Serviced sites in villages or immediately outside villages within walking distance. Plots sold at cost recovery basis for the provision of the infrastructure and build what you want. Is that a horrible vista to you?

But, I suspect you're hostile to that. At the end of the day, a good many people who endorse one offs in the middle of nowhere just want the cheap sweetheart site and the costs discussed ad nauseam on this thread externalised to everyone else. I know that's the reality of the situation. So unfortunately, they need to be dragged kicking and screaming to it via the planning system.

*Exceptions to this would be people who genuinely work in the rural / agricultural economy.

What's an essential service to you? I don't even know what you're driving at here.

Essential services are significantly more expensive to provision for with one off housing metastising all over peripheral areas. You're deliberately plugging your ears to this cold hard economic fact.

With people living in proximity to each other, communities have a chance. With your mode of willy nilly development, death of communities is garunteed.

Again, you're killing the thing you say you love.

If what you're saying is true (and I don't believe it for a second) stick a fork in rural Ireland because it's done.

One off housing does more to kill rural communities than any other variable. It's been studied at length but the chape site brigade don't want to hear it.

One-off dwellers and those that advocate for that model of willy nilly irresponsible development don't own rural ireland nor do they have a monopoly on what rural Ireland is. That's a conceit and I won't give it to you.

The penny hasn't dropped that you're advocating tooth and nail for the number one variable that is actually contributing to the decline of rural communities. That you don't see it isn't on me, it's on you.

How in God's name is the government to provide all the services you say you want to the level you say you want to dispersed houses scattered all over the countryside. It's childish and it can't be done.

There is no community in a field. You're advocating for the further decline of rural Ireland - I, and others with their head screwed on want to give it a shot at survival.