"I WONDER if we had a conscience in Ireland how much would it cost really?"
Ms Ann Louise Gilligan posed the question at the Tallaght West Community Forum, where the audience had just drawn up its vision of the future.
She had asked the audience, in an area which recently has had a very bad press indeed, to break into groups and prioritise what they wanted for Killinarden, Jobstown, Fettercairn and Brookfield.
Then, having heard the ideas, she suggested, as facilitator for the final session of the day, that they would be affordable in a country which placed the needs of communities higher in its priorities than we do.
The audience had come up with some usual and some not-so-usual ideas.
In the latter category was a proposal for small farming co-ops. It was pointed out that the area is surrounded by "an amount of empty land full of rubbish doing nothing".
Equestrian centres were sought by others as a way of dealing with the local youngsters' predilection for, and indeed possession of horses in what is a series of suburban housing estates.
An extension of the Luas to Tallaght West was also suggested instead of simply having it stop at the Square.
It would be easy to dismiss the forum as a group of people reacting to bad publicity and dreaming up wish lists, but there's more to it than that.
It has been more than a year in the planning, and its steering committee includes seasoned campaigners such as the West Tallaght Resource Centre and the Women Together Network.
The steering committee will take the ideas produced yesterday and will make them the basis of a 10-year campaign to transform the face of Tallaght West by the year 2007.
Though the accent was on building a better future for the area, there was no denial of the problems that it faces.
One group called for free community buses to take people to and from the Square - a very long trek from Tallaght West on foot - and for community patrols to stop youngsters from throwing stones at the buses.
Others called for projects to work with early school-leavers of all youngsters perhaps the ones most likely to end up in trouble or in dead-end jobs in an increasingly knowledge-based society.
A pleasant environment was high on the agenda. As one group put it: "We want boats in the river and not stolen cars.
"I believe the reality we imagine is the reality we create," said Ms Gilligan.
If we imagine something will happen it will happen."
But its not all imagination. "Let's lobby, keep lobbying and keep pushing," she told her audience.
However, one group had already worked out how to get the funding to transform Tallaght West: "We decided that we would approach RTE and Ben Dunne for the money."