A decade of sky's-the-limit prosperity has left a trail of environmental and social destruction in its wake, write Frank McDonald and James Nix in an extract from their new book
It was like A Tale of Two Cities. The audience in the old Synod Hall on Dublin's Christchurch Place for the Young Environmentalist of the Year awards in May 2002 could not have been more unlike the gathering in the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races a few months later. Only Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was common to both. The Synod Hall, now trading as Dublinia, was full of enthusiastic, idealistic transition-year students from all over the Republic. Smartly dressed in school uniforms, they were anxiously waiting to hear the adjudication results on their projects, all of which aimed to improve the environment.
Three months later, the Fianna Fáil tent in Galway was a different animal entirely. Bigger than half a dozen hay barns, it was one of the most impressive structures at the Ballybrit racecourse, accounting for nearly a third of its sprawling marquee village. This political mecca became, once again, a vehicle for making money from those who feel that Fianna Fáil is good for the Republic's, and their own, prosperity. For €350 a plate, guests got medallions of beef in a pepper cream sauce and "goodie bags" that included titanium golf balls billed as having "optimum spin for maximum control". Those who paid for the grub included some of the country's leading business people, notably big building contractors, property developers, auctioneers, estate agents and others with a stake in "development". They probably didn't realise that the Taoiseach had told the transition-year students that sustainable development and a clean environment were "fundamental" to his vision of the Republic. And if they had been aware, would it have made any difference?
But could Ahern's notion of "sustainable development" be the same as the definition used by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission)? According to its 1987 report, Our Common Future, "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". In other words, a balance must be struck between the resources used by this generation and those placed in reserve for the next. But that's not how the Taoiseach sees it. When one of the authors of this book put it to Paddy Duffy, his former special adviser, that Ahern's definition of sustainable development was "development that has to be sustained", he replied: "Exactly!" In other words, a rip-roaring pace of development was to be maintained at all costs, even at the expense of future generations - the polar opposite of what Brundtland had in mind.
Yet in April 1997, before the general election of that year, Fianna Fáil pledged that "protecting the environment will be the imperative consideration in every economic and planning decision that we make." Though it had historically been "the party of development", it now wanted to develop an economy that was "both competitive and sustainable". Not only that, there was to be a "binding plan for sustainable development" from which no sector of the economy would have the right to opt out. The environment would have to be integrated into all areas of policy, not as an afterthought or as "some form of window dressing". There would also be a "root and branch review" of all economic activities impacting on it.
Seven years on, Fianna Fáil had little to show for its 1997 environmental manifesto apart from the belated introduction, in March 2002, of the 15 cent levy on plastic bags. There was certainly no indication that the environment had been integrated into all areas of policy.
THE CHICKENS WERE also coming home to roost. In July 2004, the European Commission announced that it was taking another batch of legal actions against the Government for breaching EU directives on environmental protection. The Commission accused the Republic of failing to protect nature and wild birds, failing to safeguard shellfish in Irish waters, failing to tackle illegal waste dumping, failing to ratify an EU directive on emissions-trading on time, and failing to stop the continued use of ozone-depleting pesticides on crops. The Commission also accused the Government of failing to protect the Republic's "rich biodiversity" and of failing to deal adequately with "unlawful, environmentally damaging waste operations, and to properly implement other EU laws aimed at providing Europe's citizens with a healthy environment". On the issue of illegal dumping, the Republic is facing possible sanction by the European Court over "unauthorised waste activities" between 1997 and 2001.
An Taisce had predicted in March 2004 that the Republic would find itself hauled repeatedly before the European Court because of the Government's laissez-faire approach to environmental protection, lately highlighted by the new liberal regime on one-off housing in the countryside, which threatened a free-for-all. "How can the Government's new rural housing guidelines be squared with sustainable land use and transport, greenhouse gas reduction, habitat protection and waste and water management - all now covered by EU directives?" it asked. The answer is they can't. The new guidelines were specifically designed to make it much easier for people to build houses in the countryside, ostensibly to overcome an alleged battery of planning restrictions. Yet official figures showed that one-off houses in rural areas accounted for 43 per cent of the 68,819 new homes built in the State in 2003 - up from 36 per cent in 2000. Housing output figures for 2004 were higher again, with nearly 76,954 new homes completed, setting a record for the 10th year in succession. Noel Ahern, Minister of State at the Department of the Environment with special responsibility for Housing and Urban Renewal, hailed this as a "tremendous achievement", saying it showed that measures to boost the supply of housing were producing results.
Incredibly, a third of the Republic's total housing stock was built during the past decade to meet unprecedented levels of demand generated by population and economic growth as well as changing patterns in migration and household formation. According to Maria Graham, principal officer in the housing section of the Department of the Environment, as the Republic's population grew by about 8 per cent between 1996 and 2002, the real driver of demand was an 18 per cent growth in the key household formation age group of 25-34.
At the same time, the impact of population growth and social change, including marital breakdown and more elderly people living alone, means that Irish household sizes have been falling, from an average of 3.28 people per household in 1996 to 2.97 in 2002.
Addressing the National Housing Conference in Limerick in May 2003, Graham said the key issue underpinning current housing policy was "to deliver housing at levels to meet the overall demand and changing needs of a population, and to do this in a sustainable manner".This is not happening, however. According to a study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), as many as a third of all new homes built since the late 1990s are out of reach of basic services such as shops, schools and sports facilities, except by car.
GREATER AFFLUENCE, INCLUDING the availability of cars, has made it possible for people to live in a rural setting and commute to work in nearby cities and towns. So, too, has the massive EU-funded road-building programme which has given people easy access to new motorways. The number of people driving to work jumped from 39 per cent to 55 per cent between 1991 and 2002 - a rise of 16 points in just 11 years. Incredibly, the Republic is already among the most car-dependent countries in the world, according to Transport Investment and Economic Development, by Banister and Berechman, published in 2000. Figures compiled by its authors showed that the average car here travels 24,400km (15,250 miles) per year, a figure that is 70 per cent higher than France or Germany, 50 per cent higher than Britain and 30 per cent higher than the US.
These statistics reflect our dispersed settlement pattern and the growth in long-distance commuting. Some time around 2000, the Republic leapfrogged Britain in terms of commuting distance. Census figures show that the average length of trips between home and work increased from 10.8km (6.7 miles) in 1996 to 15.8km (9.8 miles) in 2002, a rise of nearly 50 per cent. Average commuting distance in Britain has seen a more modest increase, up from 13km (8.1 miles) to 13.8km (8.6 miles) over the same period. Clearly, this is something of a trial for the individuals involved, but it has effects on society too.
The social effects of long-distance commuting in the US have been well-documented by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone, particularly in terms of their negative impact on "social capital", or traditional community life, involving face-to-face contact with neighbours in local shops, pubs, parks and community groups. Putnam found that long commutes are "demonstrably bad" because they substantially reduce the amount of time people have to get involved. "In round numbers, the evidence suggests that each additional 10 minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by 10 per cent."
Bertie Ahern is said to have Bowling Alone on his bedside table and to have read the book twice; he even flew in the Harvard professor to address a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party gathering at the Slieve Russell Hotel near Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, last September. But Ahern's fascination with Putnam has not translated into a commitment by him or his Government to curtail suburban sprawl here. Clearly, the development of "sustainable communities" cannot be advanced by allowing Dublin, willy-nilly, to sprawl all over Leinster. Yet that is what has been happening at an accelerated pace since the mid-1990s - largely coinciding with Ahern's period as Taoiseach. The village of Rochfortbridge in Co Westmeath used to be memorable mainly for its Bord na Móna model housing scheme, designed by architect Frank Gibney in the 1930s. What Gibney could never have imagined was that suburban housing estates would appear right across the road to provide dormitories for people commuting 80km (50 miles) to Dublin every weekday. This is a phenomenon that's happening on the outskirts of almost every town and village within the capital's hugely extended commuter belt; in effect, Leinster is being colonised by refugees from Dublin's inflated property prices. Those who choose to buy the cheaper semi-detached houses in Rochfortbridge - or Dunleer, Co Louth, or Virginia, Co Cavan, or any number of other places - are, of course, condemning themselves to years of commuting by car. Other than at weekends, they cannot be part of a "community" in any meaningful sense of the word.
SO WHAT IS to be done? Will the tentacles of Irish cities and towns reach into the far corners of our countryside, with headlamps illuminating every boreen before sunrise? Or will we confront the central challenge of consolidating urban areas and, in the words of Dick Gleeson, Dublin City Council's chief planning officer, "create good places for people to live and work"? Featureless suburbs will continue to crawl across the landscape as long as the vast bulk of the Republic's housing output is made up of houses of one or two storeys with front and back gardens.
There is a reluctance to bring up a family in an apartment - typical on the Continent - although this is entirely understandable. Basic issues such as where children can play safely must be sorted out first, particularly in urban areas where space could be provided for five-a-side football pitches - but only with good planning. And in the suburbs, instead of having lifeless strips of open space and small rear gardens enclosed by breeze-block walls, why not group houses around a shared space, which would have a children's playground as well as areas where people could relax? It's not as if there are no models. Examples of sustainable housing that's successful by any social or environmental yardstick can be found throughout Europe, particularly in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. So why do we always seem to think that we must reinvent the wheel? The National Economic and Social Council, in Housing in Ireland: Performance and Policy, published in December 2004, spelled out the need for "a clear vision of the kind of high-quality, integrated, sustainable neighbourhoods that are worth building". It likened the magnitude of this task to other great challenges the Republic faced and met over the past half-century - the Lemass-Whitaker "opening up" of the Irish economy in the 1960s, and the creation of a dynamic "new economy", through social partnership, from the mid-1980s onwards.
According to the NESC, misguided "self-perceptions" are the root of the problem. "The recasting of policies and approaches in the 1980s challenged the self-perception that the Irish are a creative and convivial people, but not capable of high-grade manufacture of sophisticated objects." Twenty years on the challenge is similar: "Achievement of the new principles of urban development and social integration seem to be blocked, more than anything else, by the self-perception that the Republic is so attached to extensive development that . . . we cannot make quality, sustainable, socially cohesive cities and towns". NESC concludes with a more optimistic view. "Since the earlier perceptions were confounded by the emergence of a prosperous society and a world centre of engineering and information technology, there is no reason why we cannot prove ourselves wrong again."
Chaos at the Crossroads by Frank McDonald and James Nix is published by Gandon (€35, hardback, €25 paperback).