Our beauty spots are becoming building sites

ATOWN is a living thing, so naturally this one has changed since I moved here a decade ago, shutters coming down on shops and bank branches, and the post office pushed to its perimeters. Thankfully, there are bright new lights along with die-hards that hang in despite everything.

But what is not so great is this town stretching its tentacles beyond traditional borders to build an oversized suburbia. As a woman, who was away working in Australia discovered, when a neighbour phoned. “You know those wildflower fields behind your cottage?” she said. “Well, they’re gone.” Replaced by one of several housing estates tacked on over the last couple of decades.

Our British buddies across the water have a massive population compared to us, yet they still protect and preserve their countryside and towns. Whereas anyone who owns land here seems more or less free to sell it off for a pretty penny. Even though the entire town pays the price for their personal profit, not to mention the considerable ecological consequences.

And it is getting worse. The expanding dairy industry has forced many beef farmers out of business, benefiting builders and developers after a quick buck. An estate agent placard has been peeping from the hedgerows half a mile outside this town for ages, advertising dozens of sites for sale, all resulting in rural Ireland being razed to the ground to be replaced with plots for concrete monstrosities. A drive up any country road is an exercise in dismay as you glance towards the gap, expecting a meadow, only to be met by another ugly McMansion.

I wonder if their residents ever reflect on how their huge new homes were recently the habitat of local wildlife. Or does money always matter more than the survival of other mammals? Are creatures without credit cards viewed as trespassing vermin, pests to shoot, snare or poison? Judging by those lifeless lawns, I’m not optimistic.

Because it would be one thing if they built something in scale with the surroundings, as humans did back when we had a little humility about our place in the grand scheme of things. For hubris surely lies behind the houses getting bigger as families grow smaller — and the trend of buying a site with a ruin, known as a footprint, that allows them to plant a bully boot nearby. For usually the old homestead is overshadowed by a cement colossus, as if contemptuous of the countryside and existing period dwellings.

Massive new builds on one-acre plots are now often the first thing you see when you enter Irish villages and towns. So why do we delude ourselves that building on a beauty spot is democracy instead of destruction, ironically, of what belongs to us all?

Isn’t it time we demanded strict standards for dwellings, or developments that we lay on our precious land?

And show our love for it by not allowing greed and financial gain for a few to flatten our green fields forever.