Sustainable Development

This morning Eamon Dunphy summoned two fine gentlemen. There was a university professor whose name I didn’t remember whining about the unsustainable development of the Dublin commuter belt and then there was The Irish Times environmental editor Frank McDonald observed how Cork should be bigger. In fact twice the size. But damn those people, they all want to live in Dublin.

Well, perhaps the Government should start shipping us around the country and tell us where to live and where to work. But would that be the same government which, at least according to these lads, have created this fine mess we are supposedly in? Funny the proponents of social engineering regularly fail to spot this little inconsistency of their own.

Perhaps someone should sit them both down and explain the history of big cities. Some places that used to be grim, god-forsaken dormitories in the past have developed into self-contained towns with shopping malls and business parks. Blanchardstown is one of them. I am sure the same fate is on the cards for the likes of Ratoath. As soon as there is a critical mass of people in an area, companies and reatilers go there creating jobs and providing services.

And what is ‘sustainable development’ after all? This is one of the terms the uttering of which makes oneself feel so good, but are at the same time meaningless from the practical point of view. It is something like ‘corporate social responsibility’. How does one decide that a society is at the point where it has reached ‘sustainable development’? How does one decide a company has become ‘socially responsible’? Perhaps that is the point – leave more room for whining.