The most serious threat to Georgian Dublin is that rising sea levels as a result of global warming will ultimately reclaim the land on which the city's 18th century streets and squares were built, a conference heard at the weekend.
Ian Lumley, heritage officer of An Taisce, said this "mounting and overwhelming threat" - accelerated by melting solar ice-caps - was potentially catastrophic for Dublin, as well as more immediately for Amsterdam and Venice.
"Unlike the medieval centre running along the ridge between between Christ Church and High Street, much of the Georgian city is built on land reclaimed from the sea, as tidal waters ran close to Merrion Square until the 18th century".
Though there was no scientific consensus on the levels or timeframes for a major rise in sea levels, Mr Lumley said the threat to Dublin and other coastal cities should have put Ireland at the forefront in pressing for international action on climate change.
"The opposite is the case. Ireland's enthusiastic adoption of the US-inspired model of fossil fuel-guzzling, car-based unsustainable development is leading to accelerating destruction of the entire countryside in favour of suburban sprawl".
The National Development Plan and road plans such as the M3 motorway in Co Meath "are simply going to exacerbate congestion by extending the pattern of car-based sprawl into a wider arc around Dublin", according to Mr Lumley.
He said engineers "will be indicted by posterity for the equivalent of war crimes" for promoting road schemes, while at the same time failing to address the continuing consumption of fossil fuels, and the adverse health and social impacts of a car-based society.
Addressing the final session of a UCD conference on Georgian Dublin, Mr Lumley traced the struggle to protect the city's 18th-century heritage from the 1960s onwards and paid particular tribute to the late Deirdre Kelly, founder of the Living City Group.
"The conservation battle for the Georgian city was, in the end, largely won. Direct developments threats to its fabric have largely passed", he said. The scale and height of new development and pressures of traffic and parking are the most immediate planning issues".
Mr Lumley said that although Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square had survived intact, much of the land area of the southside Georgian core - notably rear gardens - was now a surface car park. The conference, which was jointly organised by Dr Gillian O'Brien and Dr Finola O'Kane Crimmins of UCD, agreed that more collaboration was needed among architects, engineers, planners and conservationists to secure a viable future for Dublin's Georgian buildings.
