Sir, – I commend Seán Byrne’s piece on the hidden costs of Ireland’s widely dispersed settlement patterns (Opinion, May 28th). It is disappointing that he has been subjected to the same irrational retorts that have plagued a common-sense discussion on this issue for decades.
The logic that a widely dispersed settlement pattern is inefficient and therefore more expensive for public service delivery is universally accepted. In 1976 the then An Foras Forbartha Teoranta produced a report entitled Urban Generated Housing in Rural Areas which conclusively established that rural housing cost the State between three and five times more to service. The report was suppressed by the political establishment at the time and the issue conveniently ignored ever since. Those who have periodically attempted to raise similar concerns in the intervening years have been admonished.
The apparent tactic of the rural lobby is to deliberately misrepresent the issue so as to generate a narrow and emotive urban-versus-rural debate. The standard narrative goes that urban elites and planners wish to socially engineer rural Ireland and shoehorn the population into high-rise apartments in our large metropolitan urban centres destroying centuries-old farming communities and traditional rural settlement patterns.
The reality is nothing of the sort. Of the 410,000 “one-off” dwellings in Ireland the overwhelming majority are “urban generated” with residents commuting into nearby towns and cities for employment and services.
The “rural housing issue” in Ireland is essentially an urban overspill issue and largely amounts to super low density, ex-urban sprawl and middle-class flight. The key issue which our politicians and policy-makers need to address is – in an era of scarce resources, how do we maintain a quality of service provision and insulate rural dwellers from ever-rising transport costs now that the horse has bolted? – Yours, etc,