There are more ways of choking a cat than one. There are more ways of getting rid of trees, which so many builders seem to hold in low esteem as being a waste of good building space, than one. You can, if you are a builder, advertise your new, elegant, superior town residences as being nicely set off by trees of beauty and even some antiquity. Residences for the modern environment conscious people of prospering Ireland.
The trees are, indeed a draw for some people, though so many others say "Trees - all those mucky leaves in autumn and winter. Get into your gutters, stick to your car when they're wet. Drip on you. Keep away the light. No thanks." Of course, if there were to be only one or two trees, of an acceptable size, not more than a hundred years old, that might add to the re sale value.
The builder knows how to please both sides. He has his couple of decorative trees, which look fine in spring. He knows that he can leave them stand and almost guarantee that in two years they will have to be cut down. How? Easy. He parks his heavy machinery near the tree or trees. "Careful now, that's a valuable asset." He, piles his bricks around it, he stows anything heavy and bulky within the circle of where its roots might be - not knowing any better you will innocently say - so that for about a year or how ever long it takes to put up his desirable residences, the roots get no rain.
But, equally deadly, the ground becomes so impacted that the death sentence has been passed. The ground is like concrete, and probably for many feet down. The first Spring, your tree greens up, perhaps slightly the worst for wear; the second it is on its way out, and the third year it has to be cut down - "an eye sore". That's how the sequence looks to an outsider. And, after all, you can always bring in some healthy soil and plant a new tree and wait a hundred years for it to mature to what its predecessor had been like in beauty, grace and vigour.