"Guzzle" is a New England word that is slipping from the lexicon. Like the seashore region it encapsulates, it is a bit vague. Local government officials, lawyers and insular urban dwellers prefer more precise terms, like "foreshore" or "tidal flats" or the indigestible "coastal zone management (CZM) area". This term is most fashionable because it has an acronym.
If CZM sounds like a buzz term for yet another "Brussels plot", it isn't quite. Pressure on the 2,700-mile Irish coastline is such that some administrators believe it can no longer be left to competing interests to exploit. Bitter rows over fish farms, marinas, fencing of beaches and sand removal have demonstrated the need for a co-ordinated policy to protect indigenous populations and wildlife. And, indeed, a final document for the coast was discussed, and severely criticised for its "paternalistic" approach, at a public seminar hosted by three Government Departments in Dublin earlier this week.
The problem, as a Connemara school-teacher sees it, is that soon there may be nothing left to discuss. Leo Hallissey, director of Forum in Letterfrack, is not regarded as alarmist. But he believes the greatest threat to coastal communities is not posed by those who wish to earn their living from the sea, but by those who wish to benefit from the seaside. He is talking about the new symbol of colonisation, the holiday home.
As Frank McDonald reported in this newspaper last year, the "Toblerones" of Achill and other tax-break developments spawned by Section 21 of the Finance Bill represent the extreme end of this phenomenon. The tax incentive has already left an indelible mark on the landscape, with bizarre suburban clusters appearing in the most peripheral parts of the coast. These weekend lettings come complete with streetlights, in some cases, consuming as much energy as the communities living nearby, if not more.
Local campaigns are already under way against such multiple developments in places like Enniscrone, Co Sligo; Kilkee and Lahinch, Co Clare; Bettystown, Co Meath; and Achill and the Corraun peninsula in Co Mayo. An Bord Pleanala will hold an appeal hearing this week on a scheme in Ventry, Co Kerry.
The Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) recently described the three-year seaside resort scheme, to be extended for a further year under the Finance Bill, as having "caused more planning controversy along the Irish coast than any other single measure", and as having driven property prices beyond the reach of many local residents.
You don't have to drive far west of Galway to witness the phenomenon. A recent report, issued by CEA Economic Consultants of Galway on north-west Connemara, confirms this. The area was chosen because of the prevalence of individual and clustered holiday homes, and the availability of income data for analysis, according to Kevin Heanue of CEA.
He believes the findings are applicable to many other remote tourism areas and are not just symptomatic of the west coast.
As his case study shows, rising prices on the property market have led to growing concern about the effects on first-time house-buyers. Most of the focus has been on urban areas, even though limited access to housing, especially for local residents, is a long-established phenomenon in many rural districts. In rural areas, the changing structure of the local housing market compounds the problem.
The effect on the population profile has wide-ranging implications for social change, the study says. It produces some alarming statistics. Non-residents own 40 per cent of housing stock in the area, and in some parts it is even worse. Second homes now account for 64 per cent of the housing stock in three townlands south of Clifden.
There is a domino effect. An island friend believes he may have to carry his new wife over the threshold of a mobile home, because the prices paid for property by non-residents have boosted rates charged by local building contractors. These higher construction charges have filtered through to the rental market. Fuelling the fire further is the growing willingness of landlords to accept health board rent-allowance payments.
The changing population structure created by such property transactions has profound implications for the viability of many peripheral communities, the CEA study says. Some may believe that the apocryphal Celtic tiger has virtually eliminated emigration, and other rural problems like depression and suicide; but the inability of local residents to enter the housing market, even for those in employment, is contributing to continued migration and to isolation.
Some townlands already have dual communities, with the weekend visitors sharing a different perspective on such issues as the environment, agriculture and land use, because they don't have to depend on the area for their income. Local authorities trim services when indigenous population levels fall. The situation contributes to an increasing sense of inequality felt by those left behind. Certainly a housing market that effectively excludes at least 70 per cent of the local population cannot be socially desirable.
Tourism, so often presented as the panacea for peripheral areas, is failing badly. It says tourism initiatives in north-west Connemara should be targeted at low income groups. Meanwhile, opportunities for real economic development in commercial fishing, shellfish farming and other such activities are being hampered by officialdom, as anyone in the business will tell you. This has been deterring investment in turn.
It is another example of the glaring lack of comprehension about life on the Atlantic seaboard. What's worse, this lack of comprehension is not displayed by our European neighbours who choose to settle here, or by those few non-Europeans we deign to let in. It is displayed by those who purport to have links with the west.
It is almost as if people undergo a personality change when they cross the Shannon. In a recent letter to a local publication, one developer who is fond of the area he wished to build in defended his proposal.
The venture, turned down by An Bord Pleanala, had offered jobs and rural development, he said. The area in question had the potential to become one of the tourist gems of the west, he said. It was regrettable that no proposal was now in place to "curtail the odious export" of that greatest asset, "namely the children".
But there are alternatives, and they don't depend on ephemeral tourists or stop-gap initiatives held up by dwindling EU structural funds. This particular locality is surrounded by the sea, and national school teachers like Leo Hallissey believe this is where the economic future lies. When the late John Healy talked about the death of communities in his classic No One Shouted Stop, even he could not foresee the extent of the threat to a rural fabric.
"Gaelic funk holes" are not being whipped up by Germans, French and Italians any more. They are being designed, built and bought for you and me, readers of this newspaper, to satisfy a dated image of a "wild" and once beautiful west.
Vincent Browne is on leave