"Green" policies are destroying this country

The really irony is that both you and Yurt now realise that villages and small towns that are not viable are not going to become so by simply moving the same, (and most likely less), of the same population around the same locality, and are now flapping about like fish on a river bank.

What is needed to make them viable is an increase in the local population, and that means more houses not the same or less. If either of you believe businesses in those villages or town will give an iota whether those builds are one-off or not, then you are fooling yourselves.

If people can afford to build their own houses because they have their own sites rather than the tax payer having to provide them due to developers gouging the price of rezoned sites what does it matter to you what size their houses are ? Are you jealous that they are not living in some high-rise block or some soulless estate where the least of their problems would be that the neighbours would not give them even the time of day.

The economies of towns and cities have been going downhill for years, regardless of their populations. People have reduced their shopping in these places in favour of shopping malls on the outskirts of cities. Covid has accelerated this and it is clear in the future that most retail outlets will go out of business and be replaced with home deliveries. That means large scale job losses which will turn cities into absolute hell holes. The disadvantages of rural living may actually decrease with time.

I left Ireland about 12 years ago. Before I left I helped my dad build a "one off". My siblings, uncle, cousin, neighbour also worked on the house. The next door neighbour was our aunt and gp. Within two large fields, you will find 6 large houses all directly related to each other. There is another to be hopefully built next to my parents where my sister has bought some land. There can be very strong community outside of towns. Although my parents are entering their golden years and they are only connected to a town by a 5-10 minute drive, I think they are in a very good situation. They have regular callers and they have a very reliable community. In times of hardship you will often find people cooking extra dinner and delivering it for example or providing a lift. I think the situation is fine, I don't think living in a town would make their situation any better. They also have great security, there is never a worry of harassment or burglary, there's about 20 cousins within a 5 mile radius if there was any real issues. In a town I think my dad would feel like a stranger, he has low tolerance for anti social behavior also, I think he could find himself confronting kids no matter how old he gets. He is happy where he is.

This is in America where in most cities the car is king (although that's changing in some) and there's a lot of transient workers with short term lettings. Much different set up here in ancient European cities where families live in one area, or people settle in an area to become part of the community where they look after each other. You'll find evidence of this in Dublin, Cork, Rome, Waterford, Madrid... all over Europe.

Have you heard of Third Age? They have serious concerns about the rising age & the single person households in rural Ireland. They use data from the IRISH census & the Dept of all-island research in Maynooth university. The departure of populations from market towns and rural villages have had serious implications for retention of amenities such as Garda stations, post offices, and the need for better rural transport links. The closure of so many garda stations around the country has already created feelings of insecurity among home owners, particularly older people living alone, and the government has recently re-opened some stations that had been closed. The local post office, bank, village shops is particularly relevant to less mobile people who are dependent on such facilities.

https://www-irishmirror-ie.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/most-crime-ridden-districts-ireland-21930352.amp?amp_js_v=a6&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16393334184539&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishmirror.ie%2Fnews%2Firish-news%2Fmost-crime-ridden-districts-ireland-21930352

Every square inch of Dublin is being turned into apartments, usually in the worst way possible.

But do you know what's really being built in this country? The past, that's what.

Tenements masquerading as "co-living", scarcity of facilities, scarcity of entertainment, scarcity of community, scarcity of housing, unaffordability, poverty increasing, homelessness, a new version of landed gentry who rent the swathes of housing they own, vast foreign ownership of supposedly Irish land, infrastructure and housing, biased taxes running away with themselves, education costs increasing and becoming more exclusionary, and so on.

Of course there's going to be fuel poverty too. Of course!

This place is doomed, pure doomed. All for the sake of greed. We're going back to the good old days before we were even a sovereign nation, make no mistake.

Cities or rural country? Kiss them both goodnight.

Mate, I was driving around a lot of parts of Dublin recently, and it was literally a case of "do you remember that? Yeah, that's going to be apartments." Over and over and over.

Bingo Halls, strips of land you could squeeze two footpaths onto, fields, bowling alleys, shopping centers...and so on.

There'll be nothing left in the place except towers of people gawking out of windows at other towers of people gawking out windows.

I can see where you're coming from.

However, if you think these things are being built to solve the housing crisis or to help people out, you're gonna find out.

That's if you haven't already found out after years and years and years of the crisis.

This isn't about modern living, or advancement, or changes, it's about extracting maximum profit.

These apartment blocks, and similar, are being built to extract maximum money. There isn't a snowballs chance in hell they will have a beneficial effect. The same way they didn't the year before, and the year before that,and the year before that...

And note how the proportion of all building in this country is, every year, more and more majority apartments. Big money!

They'd turn you into an apartment if they could. And that's what will be left in the city, extortionate boxes that were built on the rubble of facilities.

It would be great if it were incompetency.

But it isn't. There are people making money out of renter's, "buyers" and developments like it's going out of fashion.

That's the only indication you need as to the future of this country. No matter what they say, anybody of them, it's about the money. Hence a crisis that never ends.

You'd be as well waiting for hell to freeze over. The only thing that at least allows a chance to end this housing robbery is a crippling recession. And it's no guarantee that a recession would change anything anyway.

That's how bad it's gotten.

Of course there's profit involved, as there is in anywhere in the country, including farming. That's how it works, but it's not the Matrix. Your dystopian idea of Dublin and what it's to become is way off the mark. Driving around it observing what was once brown field sites, bowling alleys or shopping centres is just nostalgia for something you never availed off.

The city is resilient, it's been through a lot from British rule, a heroin crisis and numerous recessions. It prevailed long before the likes of you doomsayers came a long and it will prevail long after you're gone.

Doesn’t matter what side of the debate you are on, in this thread, one thing we all have in common is that there is no way we are going to be putting ourselves or our families at a disadvantage for the greater good of community.

I think we can see this trait when we look at covid restrictions responses etc

For this reason I think humans won’t combat climate change (regardless of wether you think humans can have any effect on the climate or not), because we cant put ourselves at a disadvantage for the good of society. That’s going against our survival instincts which are hardwired into us.

'It's just a flesh wound'...