A chara, – In the past few weeks the New York Times used Dingle as an example of what happens when a building boom goes bust (Opinion, April 3rd).
We are left with houses sprawled all over our towns and countryside, half of them empty.
What’s rarely mentioned in these discussions, however, is that people in Dingle, and most people in Co Kerry and elsewhere, have opposed this kind of unsustainable housing expansion. In the past year alone, nine successful appeals were brought to the Planning Appeals Board to stop inappropriate developments locally.
Dingle is still a beautiful place, but the efforts of developers, landowners and their spokespersons, local politicians, are undermining our community and our biggest native industry, tourism.
We need a comprehensive national landscape policy to regulate the way we use our land, so that we build sustainably and protect one of our greatest assets, our countryside.
But with local elections around the corner, our councillors are lining up to do just the opposite, shouting instead for the planning laws to be reduced even more. This is populism gone mad.
All things considered, would we be better off if we reduced the number of councillors – 57 for Kerry alone – currently undoing our best attempts to create a sustainable future? We’d save some money too. Is mise, –