THERE is no more important feature of a democracy in western Europe than its planning; how it balances past, present and a future which might prize what we have more highly than we do. Everything we have is mortgaged; we borrow from past and present.
We have seen this in the controversies over the OPW sponsored heritage centres in Wicklow and Clare and Phoenix Park, where the central argument was not whether the centres were right for the moment but whether they were right for the long term; whether our priorities today will be priorities of future generations. If, not, will what we are doing now be later undoable?
As it happened, in those controversies it was. The heritage centres in the Burren and Wicklow came to nothing, with the loss of several millions of public money. And, while those controversies raged, an irreversible ecological calamity was being visited on one of the most precious habitats in all of Ireland, with not a word said.
How was this? How was it possible that the Old Head of Kinsale could be ravaged so while our eyes were dancing over the prospects of Clare and Wicklow? Why did the OPW not do anything to preserve this most wonderful headland in Ireland so that others might enjoy it for generations to come as generations in the past have been able to enjoy it? The OPW is charged with the maintenance of the wildlife parks of Ireland: there was no finer maritime park in the land than that, on the Old Head. And now it is gone.
Irreversibly Destroyed
It is gone as utterly as the riverbanks of the Fleet under the city of Dublin; more irreversibly destroyed than Wood Quay. It has disappeared. Sure, the contours of the headland remain; the more intransigently, vertical slopes above the snarling seas below have remained immune to rape by the army of vast earth moving vehicles which have moved on to the site; and the old lighthouse remains intact and stoic as ever. But the substance of what made the Old Head magical, what lifted the soul on mad, stormed tossed days, were the 240 acres of tussock grass, bogland and heather, which nourished a huge wildlife - choughs in wheeling numbers, calling through the gales at one another; puffins and kestrels gannets and fulmars; wheatears and whinchats and stonechats and nameless armies of darting small birds that rewarded long waits with binoculars and a birdbook.
In place of the 240 acre mattress of rucky, hummucky grass, a vast golf course is being constructed, with practice greens and fairways, bunkers and traps, nascent ponds, and strange, alien plantforms. Builders have come with a heavy hand and bridged and ruled and ruined the land - ruined it not just for this golf playing generation, but for all time. What has been done to the Old Head of Kinsale is the eradication of thousands of years of ecological history. We will properly be cursed for letting it happen.
Golfing Barbarism
It is a classic case of Newlanditis. Newlands golf club in Dublin set the standard for golfing barbarism ten years or more ago after surveyors decided that it would be cheaper to retain the great 18th century mansion, Newlands House, as a clubhouse than build from new. Yet, with this advice in their breast pockets, the club committee then chose to destroy the house anyway.
This was an act of idiot vandalism which even now defies belief, It was sui generis; until, that is, the attack of Newlanditis at the Old Head of Kinsale, which even exceeds in destructiveness the horrors of the eponymous house in Dublin. And all needless, needless. If the OPW had been half as vigorous in defence of the existing natural parkland as it was in getting involved in the silly, footling heritage interpretative industry, the Old Head would now be safe in public hands.
I say natural parkland, for it, was just that; not in the sense of municipal park, but in the older meaning of enclosed, protected land. Such land does not come free. For all the years that I walked the Old Head, the land, was, I am told, owned by a local farmer named Roche. I see no reason why that gentleman should be expected to provide, land for my entertainment. He sold it on, and I do not blame him for that but there was only one logical buyer of the park, and that was the State.
The State, too busy with its damned fool enterprises elsewhere, did not act, and a private developer bought the Head over. He did not need planning, permission to build a golf course in those days, and he proceeded to ravage the soil and the sub soil, moving tens of thousands of tons of soil to restructure the surface, to provide a false local environment for close cropped greens, to plough fairways through the wide acres and to gouge out, bunkers to ensnare fat, frustrated visitors.
Priceless Coastline
No doubt golfers like links golf; but there is no reason on earth why they should be given a monopoly over one of the most priceless parts of our coastline. Merely because a small group of powerful people want something desirable should not mean they get it. Yet something odd happens to central planners when the word golf is mentioned; they genuflect and hiss obeisance.
But never mind my own loathing of golf; a rugby stadium on that site would enrage me equally, and not merely be cause of the wondrous wildlife sanctuary that has been destroyed. The Old Head is also one of the key points in world history. Events off its cape in time caused the USA to depart from world isolation and become a world power. It is a node in history far more vital than the Trafalgar headland, which is still protected to this day. And, of course, they do not play golf at Trafalgar; but they do play golf on the haunted, windswept land overlooking the seas where 1,198 souls perished on the Lusitania. A wildlife sanctuary has been raped and the dead of the Lusitania still have no memorial on the cape beside which they perished. There is, instead, a memorial to Newlanditis.