Unlike most European countries, Irish planning policy is highly permissive and continues to facilitate widely dispersed settlement patterns. Colloquially known as detached ‘one-off’ housing, the right to self-build in the countryside is a ubiquitous feature of the Irish landscape, a closely guarded private property right and a highly contentious political issue, deeply emblematic of Ireland’s conservative socio-political culture and strong rural idyll.

Scattered and suburbanised settlement patterns have now become normalised as a benign, even ‘traditional’, feature of Irish rural society as highlighted, for example, by the Irish Farmers Association:

“Our traditional pattern of homes spread across rural Ireland has created a living countryside that sustains rural communities. It ensures that rural depopulation does not emerge and that a balanced age profile occurs in the countryside. This in turn maximises the number of people participating in education, sports, social activity and commerce in the local community.” (p.4)

Alternative perspectives which strive to point out the very serious flaws with this commonly held view and the significant economic, social and environmental costs associated with far-flung settlement patterns are often marginalised in political debate and arbitrarily rebuked as ‘anti-rural’ or urban elitist.

The evidence suggests, however, that Ireland’s high prevalence of suburbanised settlement patterns, as noted by, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Planning, the National Economic and Social Council, the Irish Planning Institute, An Taisce and many others, is simultaneously hollowing-out our rural towns and villages, stripping them of their commercial and service functions which support local rural economies, while dragging ever wider rural hinterlands into the commuter catchments of larger cities. Indeed reversing acute depopulation in rural towns and villages is a core pillar of the government’s current action plan for the economic and social regeneration of rural Ireland.

The pervasiveness of detached one-off housing patterns is therefore not a rural phenomenon, but primarily an urban one. However, this is largely overlooked in the partisan debate over its causes and consequences, which is often characterised by emotive rhetoric. ‘Rural Ireland’ is effectively a metonym for ‘Suburban Ireland’.

To date, recourse to evidence has not managed to stifle the continued proliferation of housing dispersal, creating manifold political problems for future planning and development. As the National Economic and Social Council noted:

“Achievement of the new principles of urban development and social integration seem to be blocked, more than anything else, by the belief that Ireland is so attached to dispersed development and so divided between different social groups and interests, that we cannot make quality, sustainable, socially-cohesive cities and towns.” (p. ix).

How many One-Off houses are there?

One-off rural housing in Ireland is not a minor phenomenon. According to Census 2016, one-off houses (defined as occupied detached houses with individual sewerage systems) comprised 442,669 dwelling units – 26% of the approximately two million occupied dwellings in the country. Between 2011-2016, almost 40% of all homes constructed were one-off houses, and for seventeen counties, one-off housing comprised over half of all dwellings built.

Prior to 1970, 148,513 one-off houses were built in Ireland. However, in tandem with the increasing availability of private cars, since 1970 294,156 one-off dwellings have been built with 117,000 constructed since 2001. County Galway has the highest proportion with 60%, closely followed by County Roscommon (56%) and County Leitrim (52%). The northwest generally has the highest proportion of one-off dwellings. It is also the most economically disadvantaged region of the country with few urban settlements of note.

There is a widespread misperception that current planning policy makes it difficult to get planning permission for a one-off dwelling. This is usually based on anecdotal evidence from individual hard cases. However, in reality between 2000- 2017, according to the Central Statistics Office, the Irish planning system permitted almost 190,000 new detached one-off dwellings. Nationally, this accounts for 24% of all houses granted planning permission during this period.

There are strong geographical variations with Galway (52%), Mayo (45.9%), Donegal (41.3%) and Kerry (40%) having the highest share of one-off permissions. The breakdown of the regions with the highest share of one-off permissions was in the West (42%) followed by the Border (31.7%), Mid-West (31%) and South-West (29%) with the Midland (24%) and Mid-East (17.6%) having the lowest share.

SEE HOW MANY ONE-OFF HOUSES HAVE BEEN GRANTED IN YOUR AREA HERE

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Contrary to popular belief that there are significant restrictions on planning permissions for one-off housing, in most counties in Ireland there is a greater than 90% chance of securing planning permission, with only a tiny percentage being appealed to An Bord Pleanála (<7% nationally). County Galway and County Mayo, for example, the two counties with the highest rates of one-off builds, have an overall grant rate of 94.3% and 97% respectively.

Distance of One-Off Housing from Towns

The most significant issue associated with the widespread occurrence of one-off house building is its scattered and haphazard spatial distribution and the urban-generated haemorrhaging of population to the countryside. This was recognised in Ireland’s first sustainable development strategy in 1997 as clearly unsustainable. This strategy recommended a presumption against one-off housing as, being isolated from all other activities which the householder normally requires (such as work, shops, schools and entertainment), one-off housing is a large utiliser of energy; associated with increased roads and transport costs; and negatively impacts the urban fabric of towns and villages.

Since then, actual trends in one-off housing new-builds have proliferated in a diametrically opposite direction with the 2005 government rural housing guidelines introducing a presumption in favour of one-off housing. The extent of one-off housing proliferation is fully illustrated vividly in this Map included by the EPA in Irelands Environment 2008 (p. 161) which shows new residential addresses registered in just a two-year period between 2005-2007.

Of the total number of one-off dwellings in Ireland, 425,840 (96%) were located outside towns or villages identified in Census 2016. The table below shows the straight-line distance of one-off houses from their closest town. Over 83% were located more than 1 km from a settlement, while 65,583 (15.4%) were more than 5 km from their nearest town. Just 1% (4,635) of occupied one-off houses did not fall within a 10 km radius of any town in 2016, with just 114 of these built between 2011 and 2016.

Open in Excel: Census 2016 Profile 1 – Housing in Ireland Table 2.1

However, by far the biggest category (68%) were located between 1-5 kilometres from a town. This data indicates that the incidence of one-off rural housing is principally super low density and random urban-generated sprawl and counter-urbanisation around our towns and villages which, for the most part, has no economic connection to its rural hinterland.

The ubiquity of the Irish one-off housing phenomenon, therefore, unlike as regularly depicted in national media and political discourse, has generally nothing to do with agriculture or the rural economy. According to the Teagasc Farm Survey there are currently c.140,000 farms in Ireland, as compared to the 442,669 one-off dwellings. Indeed, the largest socio-economic groups in many parts of rural Ireland are ‘Managerial and Technical’, most of whom commute to nearby urban centres for work by private car.

Social Equity

There is a serious social equity aspect to the one-off housing phenomenon. Those who inherit land, or have the means to purchase it, can build houses in the countryside. According to the CSO, the average size of a one-off dwelling permitted in Ireland today is in excess of 240 square metres (>2,500 square feet). This is, on average, over 100 square metres greater than the average housing unit in urban settings. The very large size, and often elaborate design, of single one-off dwellings is symptomatic of ‘middle class flight’ and population leakage to peri-urban areas, at the same time that it weakens the urban centres upon which it depends.

The strong landed class element of one-off rural housing is suggestive of why it is such a politically shielded phenomenon. This is reinforced by the ‘local need’ restrictions included in the 2005 guidelines and highly favourable intra-family land transfer tax provisions, which socially reproduces privilege and wealth in certain cohorts of Irish society. According to the CSO, those commuting greater than 30 minutes to work typically have higher incomes, which is suggestive that much of the counter-urbanisation around Ireland’s towns and cities is largely, what is commonly known as, ‘middle class flight’.

These local need ‘bloodline’ conditions are arguably unlawful under national and European Union law. A report by the Law Society Reform Commission in 2005, hosted on the website of An Bord Pleanala, concluded that such conditions are discriminatory. More recently, a further report on the so-called ‘Flemish Case’, which ruled that ‘bloodline’ conditions were incompatible with EU law, similarly concluded inequitable policies framed around family connections to an area are likely to be found to breach EU law, as the purposes they are intended to achieve (such as preserving rural characteristics etc.) can usually be attained without such discrimination. This further highlights the significant social inequity of current rural housing policies which effectively socially reproduces landed wealth amongst certain bloodlines to the exclusion of other citizens. This fact is not lost on local politicians and perpetuates political clientelism.

Economic Costs

There is often a misapprehension that there are no economic costs to society associated with one-off rural housing and, consequently, who could be against it? Indeed, it is frequently suggested that one-off rural dwellers internalise and directly pay for most of the services they require, such as water and waste-water, and do not benefit from public infrastructure (e.g. roads, footpaths, street lights etc.) that urban dwellers benefit from and should, therefore, be exempt from taxes and charges. However, this popular belief ignores the very high hidden and hidden costs associated with the occurrence of one-off dispersed housing.

All human settlement requires public investment and expenditure, via general tax income, to sustain it. At issue with widely scattered development patterns, however, is the extremely inefficient costs of maintaining such sprawling (r)urban settlement patterns, which externalises greater expenditure to society at large. In effect, one-off rural dwellers consume far more tax income than they generate and are heavily cross-subsidised, although that fact is a political taboo and seldom acknowledged in public debate.

Ironically, it is the high cost of servicing ad hoc settlement patterns which has a direct cost to one-off rural dwellers themselves, as the maintenance of basic public services (e.g. roads, post offices, Garda stations, broadband etc.) becomes unaffordable and unviable under such conditions. This results in the frequent withdrawal of services, cementing a downward spiral of disadvantage in many rural regions and a sharp rural/urban divide in political discourse.

The deficiency of rural infrastructure and services is, of course, a regular topic of public debate. However, an open recognition that our scattered settlement patterns is a large part of the problem rarely features. The very high public cost of haphazard development patterns also has a parallel negative impact on our urban centres through the inefficient diversion of public funds. This results in a catch-22 of simultaneously weak cities, towns, villages and rural areas, further exacerbating sprawl all the while reinforcing the outsized dominance of Dublin in the national urban hierarchy.

The economic costs of scattered rural housing was recognised as far back as 1976 when the then An Foras Forbartha put the cost the State of between three and five times more to service than clustered dwellings. More recently, a study by University College Dublin revisited the issue in a report prepared for the EPA. The report concluded that:

“On balance, it does seem that the social costs of scattered development far exceed the benefits. However, of at least equal relevance, is that the two sets of costs and benefits are quite different by definition. One set is mostly social. The other is private. If we restrict the argument to the prevailing nature of development as separate from the case for rural development per se, the arguments in favour of permitting people to build almost however, or wherever, they like, would appear to be unproven. It is, though, clearly inequitable that private benefits should be allowed to dominate the wider public good.” (p.226)

Electricity

According to the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), the scattered and widespread distribution of rural populations means that Ireland has four times the European average of length of network per capita and the ratio of overhead lines to underground cables is 6:1 (180,000km – 4.5 times the circumference of the Earth). With so much overhead line exposed to weather and other events, there is a significant cost and challenge in maintaining an adequate and reliable electricity supply in rural areas. As noted by the ESB submission to the 2001 – 2005 Distribution Price Review:

“Continuity of supply on ESB’s network compares unfavourably with, for example, European and UK companies. This is in part due to the settlement pattern in Ireland, whereby individual dwellings, rather than cluster development, tend to be the norm. This gives rise to a higher length of network per Irish customer than is the case for any of their European counterparts.” (p.5)

The scattered and widespread distribution of the rural population in Ireland means that the ESB has approximately 1.6 million customers who are spread over an area of 70,000 km2. By comparison, the average area for UK generators would be around 15,000 km2. Even if a comparison is drawn with Scotland; an example of a country of similar size, population and with a low overall population density; the ESB has five times the length of overhead line to supply and maintain (154,000 km) compared with Scottish Hydro (30,000 km) despite only having two-and-a-half times as many customers.

To avoid voltage drop due to transmission loss over this extended network, at least one transformer for every square kilometre is needed in almost 75% of the area supplied by the ESB. This means that Ireland has almost one-third the number of transformers as in the UK despite having a total distribution network of just half the size and 6% of its population. The inefficiency and length of the network has significant financial costs (Scott and Brereton, 2010 p. 216).

Electricity supply is the only utility where a cost differential between rural and urban homes applies. However, the marginally higher price paid by rural customers falls a long way short of the higher cost incurred in providing and maintaining the service due to a ceiling imposed by the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER). Consequently, the proportion of costs not recouped directly from one-off rural homeowners accrues as a public cost from all customers in their electricity bills.

In addition to the high costs of electricity distribution, Eirgrid are currently rolling out a multi-billion-euro grid investment programme in the transmission network. The widespread distribution of single rural houses is creating considerable conflict, delays and cost overruns to the delivery of this infrastructure due to local community opposition. Furthermore, securing a route through the necklace of dwellings lining public roads often requires circuitous routes, adding further expense to the taxpayer.

Postal Services

Despite being a monopoly service provider on letter post and the fact that stamp prices in Ireland are high by international standards, An Post has poor profitability and has experienced severe financial difficulties. An Post has a Universal Service Obligation (USO) to deliver to each and every residential address daily during the week. Rural deliveries add substantially to the cost of meeting this obligation.

In the 1970s, An Foras Forbartha estimated that delivery costs to dispersed homes (>58 metre frontage) cost three-and-half times than closely knit properties (5 metre frontage). More than twenty-five years later, data released by An Post to Dr. Diarmuid O Gráda indicated that rural mail delivery is four times more expensive. Delivery in Dublin is estimated to cost half the price of a postage stamp, but in rural areas it is estimated to be double this amount.

In a bid to save €20m a year, in 2003 An Post sought to introduce roadside letter boxes for half-a-million homes. The proposal was opposed, partly on the grounds that daily contact between remote householders and the postman provided an important social benefit and reduced isolation. Inevitably, though, the high cost of delivery has deterred the company from providing a Saturday service and has made rises in the price of stamps for all customers inevitable.

Due to high costs, An Post have been attempting to rationalise their post office network but the issue is politically controversial. In practice, however, a covert process of closures has been occurring upon the retirement of postmasters, further eroding services to rural communities. Much of the data on rural postal services is unavailable due to the ongoing implementation of the EU’s Third Postal Directive which requires the liberalisation of the postal sector. An Post is concerned that publication of such information could assist potential competitors in cherry-picking profitable services. Given the locked-in spatial costs of rural postal delivery, the cost of services to rural householders is likely to rise in the future as a result of increased privatisation (Scott and Brereton, 2010).

Roads

Ireland has 91,000 km of on-national roads (over twice the circumference of the Earth) representing 94% of the total length of all the country’s roads and carrying around 60% of total traffic. Ireland’s road network per head of population (25.68 km per 1,000 population) is considerably greater than the EU average and over twice that of the Member State with the next highest road length (8.5 km per 1,000 population). Many of these minor roads are laneways that evolved with farming practice and are unsuited to significant traffic movements. The high density of non-national roads places an onerous maintenance costs burden on local government. According to the Irish Concrete Federation demand for aggregates in Ireland is at 12 tonnes per capita; twice the current EU 28 average, “due to Ireland’s infrastructural deficit, dispersed pattern of settlement and resulting large road network”.

As more houses are built along unsuitable minor roads, a greater obligation is placed on local authority to maintain them. The former Lord Mayor of Cork summed up the situation when interviewed on RTE radio following a period of particularly severe weather in early January 2010:

“these roads years ago were for donkey and cart or maybe for the one car coming up with a family…but what’s after happening over the years is that you have the oil trucks, you have delivery trucks, all coming up here to service these [houses]…now you have a car coming along they have to pull in left and right, they are not wide enough for them and so the surface and the edges of the roads are really been torn asunder and this is what’s happening to us ……how are we going to afford it?”

Reviewing Ireland’s road maintenance budget demonstrates that the more population dispersal that is permitted, the greater the amount of road spending that is required. Local Authority spending on road maintenance is typically the largest budget item in rural local authorities. In County Donegal, for example, it comprises 29.4% of the budget (€40 million). In urban councils, such as Galway City, it comprises just 16.3% (€12.3 million). The Regional and Local Roads programme costs €275m in capital funding in 2017/2018. According to the latest data on local authority financial spends, per capita spending in 2015 on roads in County Leitrim (highest spend) was €336 compared with €56 across the four Dublin local authorities.

An analysis of this data and an approximate local authority one-off housing rate based on 2011 POWCAR data carried out by the All-Island Research Observatory at Maynooth University for Kildare County Council reveals that there is a clear correlation between high levels of per capita spend on road maintenance and high rates of rural one-off housing within local authority areas. For example, 10 of the 31 local authorities in Ireland are estimated to have greater than half of housing classed as rural one-offs. All of these local authorities have an annual per capita spend on road maintenance of between €144 and €336 (€194 average). In contrast to this, 6 local authorities have a rural one-off rate less than 4% with per capita annual spend on road maintenance of between €49 and €92 (€60 average). Overall, it is estimated that the differential between rural and urban public road expenditure is at least 3 times higher (€194 v €60).

Public Transport

The provision of public transport services in rural areas with highly dispersed settlement patterns is evidently much more expensive and inefficient, often running at a net loss and requiring significant or complete subsidisation by the State. The absence of public transport in rural areas is often commented on. However, providing an affordable network is impossible under the conditions of thinly spread population distribution. For example, the controversial closure of the Rosslare-Waterford rail line was effectively due to lack of demand as a consequence of population dispersal and the unsuitability of rail services as compared to private cars.

As discussed by Nix (2010), some expensive services are essentially rural. They include the rural transport scheme which costs €16 million euro annually and mostly addresses the unmet transport needs of elderly and disabled rural residents and the school transport scheme that costs approximately €200m a year.

In order to qualify for school transport, a child must be living more that 3.2 km from the nearest school, in the case of primary students, and 4.8 km, in the case of post primary schools. Of the 135,000 pupils carried annually, about 8,000 are students with special needs, and 30% of the cost is attributable to these pupils. Contributions make up 5% of the overall cost. Therefore, around €130 million a year is attributable to mainstream primary and secondary pupils. The annual subsidy per pupil works out at €1,025 per year, which equates to around €2.80 per journey for each student.

Telecommunications

As noted in the AIRO study, costs for the provision of communications infrastructure are much higher per user in dispersed rural areas than for urban areas, but are borne by private operators rather than public utilities.

Companies must cover this cost through their customer income and so this is largely transferred to all users irrespective of need. Consequently, one-off settlement adds to the costs borne by the wider population.

High speed broadband, for example, is essential to the social inclusion of rural communities. Delivering high speed broadband therefore presents a persistent and significant challenge. With only 67 people per square kilometre, Ireland has one of the lowest population densities in Europe. Some counties in Ireland have a population density as low as 19 people per square kilometre. This low population density, coupled with a sparsely distributed rural population makes the deployment of a high speed broadband network infrastructure difficult and costly. As a result, a rural/urban differential, or ‘digital divide’ arises in terms of access to, and quality of, service.

The higher cost of provision of broadband to rural areas has meant that service providers have been reluctant to provide services. Instead, costs must be borne directly by private individuals who have to sign up to more expensive and inferior satellite based services. In response, the Government has had to intervene with various broadband schemes, with the current scheme estimated to cost the tax payer in the region of €350 million euro over the period to 2020 – a direct subsidy of €460 for each of the 757,000 addresses covered. The National Broadband Scheme has so far been marred with constant setbacks and has proven unsuccessful. This map shows the massive geographical extent of the National Broadband Plan intervention areas.

Car Dependency

Ireland’s extreme car dependency primarily arises from our highly scattered and sprawling settlement patterns; the consequent high costs of providing reliable and efficient public transport; and historical public policy heavily favouring road transport.

Car ownership in Ireland has grown rapidly in recent decades and has progressively forced people’s reliance on the private car as their dominant mode of transport. Inevitably, as dispersed rural housing increases, car dependency and journey time to work, education and social amenities also increases. In general, and based on an average accessibility to all services, rural one-off housing, has a 64% higher travel time to services than those residing in urban areas.

Ireland is one of the most car dependent societies in the world. The numbers of cars on the road has more than trebled since the 1970s and Irish drivers average approximately 22,000 km per annum which is more than twice the European average, and even higher than the USA. It has been estimated that rural transport accounts for 80% of total vehicle kilometres travelled annually.

According to the CSO, in 2016, 65.6% (1,229,966) of those commuting to work in Ireland either drove or were passengers in a car. In contrast, just over 9% (174,569) of working commuters used public transport. In rural areas, only 2 % of commuters use public transport and only 4 % walked to work. While just under half of working commuters living in Dublin city and suburbs commuted by car, more than 60% did so in Cork and Limerick. In rural areas, 70% of people use a car to get to work. Although, the number of people cycling to work has recorded a notable uptick in recent years (+43%), the numbers are still tiny with just 3% cycling and 9% of commuters walking to work.

In 2016, owing to the chronic increase in traffic congestion in all major urban settlements and increasing long-distance commuting, travel times to work rose in every county and the national average commuting time was 28.2 minutes, up from 26.6 minutes in 2011. Commuters in counties bordering Dublin had the longest average commuting time, with those in counties Meath and Wicklow travelling for almost 35 minutes. In 2016, nearly 200,000 commuters (1 in 10), spent an hour or more commuting to work, an increase of almost 50,000 (31%) since 2011. In Wicklow, Meath, Laois, Kildare and Westmeath one in five parents of 0-4 year-old children had a commute of over an hour.

The direct costs of car dependency are obviously the huge investments required in the upkeep of local road infrastructure, particularly given Ireland’s oversized network of substandard single carriageway local roads. However, the consequences of car-dependency for Irish society are far more complex and wide-ranging and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, such as rural households. For example, one result of car dependency is the creation of an ‘obesogenic’ environment with significant public health and cost implications. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Ireland has the highest cases of obesity and excess weight in the whole of Europe. By 2030, it is predicted that almost half of both men and women will be obese, which is a public health epidemic.

The social and economic costs of long commutes and traffic delays, particularly on people’s quality of life and social and family contact, are also significant. In addition, the cost of living in rural areas is estimated by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice to be considerably higher than in urban areas. High transport fuel prices account for a significant share of the differential between urban and rural living costs. Indeed, in many cases transport costs in rural areas are almost double that of urban areas. As rural households in Ireland use their cars more intensively than in other EU countries, they are also much more vulnerable to fuel price rises and also initiatives to deal with Ireland’s very high greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon taxes.

Our over-reliance on private car transport is also a major feature in our foreign oil dependency where c.€6 billion leaves Ireland annually to fund oil imports. Ireland is one of the most import dependent countries in Europe for fossil fuels. Over 70% of oil used in Ireland in 2014 was for transport and this has risen 183% since 1990. 97% of energy used in the transport sector was from oil based products. This near total dependence on a single fuel source is unique to this sector and makes rural dwellers extremely vulnerable to geopolitical uncertainty and price fluctuations.

Climate Change

In parallel with increased car dependency, between 1990 and 2015, transport showed the greatest overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions, at 130.3%. In 1990, road transport accounted for 4,780 kt Co2 emitted. Today, it accounts for 11,328 kt Co2. Road transport emissions increased by 136.7% over this period and accounts for 96% of all transport emissions.

The Government has conceded that, despite successive national policies which have had the consistent stated objective of promoting modal shift away from private cars and better integrating land-use and transportation, these policies have all failed. As a result, given the diverse range and dispersed patterns of journey origins and destinations, there is now extremely limited potential for reducing emissions in the transport sector and “current spatial patterns remain very unfavourable to efficient and sustainable transport provision”(p.46).

The EPA projects that transport sector emissions are projected to increase by 20% over the period 2020-2035. According to a government briefing , in the absence of national mitigation, potential costs of purchasing compliance for the Irish Exchequer for the 2020 to 2030 period could have a cumulative total of billions of euro. Current government Food Harvest 2020 policy is to ring-fence agriculture from greenhouse gas reduction efforts. This means that a major share of the burden will fall on transport. Given the locked in spatial legacy and high incidences of ex-urban housing sprawl and car dependency, the only solution seemingly available is an increase in carbon tax, further driving up costs for rural families. The government proposes that carbon taxes will increase to €80 per tonne by 2030.

Water Pollution

Ireland faces major challenges in achieving legally binding obligations under the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The most common sources of water pollution in rural areas are farmyard wastes, land spreading of slurry, fertilisers and outflow from individual septic tanks from one-off houses.

According to 2016 census statistics, 26% of all of Ireland’s houses use individual septic tanks. Over 80% of households in rural areas (accounting for one third of Ireland’s population) treat and dispose of wastewater effluent on-site through septic tanks or other domestic systems. The total number of septic tanks in Ireland presently amounts to roughly 500,000 and owes in large part to the glut of one-off dwellings constructed during the last twenty years. The discharge from these septic tank systems is estimated to be in the range of 200 – 300 million litres per day. On a national scale, this is equivalent to 84 Olympic swimming pools per day of unregulated human waste. According to the EPA, 90% of rural wastewater systems are septic tanks of which 50% fail and two-thirds remain umediated two years after inspection. There is a €5,000 non-means tested grant available. Based on the figures quoted above, this could cost Irish tax payers €1,250,000.

There are a number of different pollutants in domestic wastewater, each of which can cause problems for health and the environment. Nationwide, most drinking water supplies (75%) are sourced from surface water while approximately 25% comes from groundwater. However, rural counties with high numbers of one-off houses typically depend much more on groundwater, e.g. Roscommon (90%), North Tipperary (76%), Laois (54%) and Wexford (40%).

Rural Ireland has high instances of faecal coliform pollution, or vero cytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC), which is the reason why there are so many boil water advisory notices. The presence of a single faecal coliform in a drinking water supply is a breach of the Drinking Water Regulations. The chief illness associated with exposure to inadequately treated domestic wastewater is acute gastrointestinal illness causing fever, nausea and diarrhoea. Vulnerable people such as infants, pregnant women, the elderly or those with pre-existing health conditions are particularly at risk of serious health consequences if exposed to these pathogens.

Where septic tanks are not properly located, designed, installed, operated and managed they pose a threat to human health. One of the biggest challenges for households relying on these systems is inadequate percolation of effluent due to unsuitable soil types. A 2005 study undertaken by Trinity College Dublin of 74 randomly located septic tank systems in Leinster revealed that only 5% were situated in soil conditions appropriate for adequate wastewater percolation and indicated the likelihood of similar figures elsewhere. Recent data from the EPA show that at least 50% of septic tanks inspected fail.

It is estimated that up to 95% of current septic tanks may not be functioning properly. In the northwest and Shannon river basin there are approximately 60,000 and 84,000 septic tanks respectively located in areas where there is inadequate percolation is available. A detailed study of five selected on-site septic tank systems by the National Centre for Freshwater Studies in 2008 found that in each case septic tanks were either poorly maintained, non-operational or poorly installed, and the majority of sites were unsuitable for septic tanks.

In 2010, the European courts found that Ireland had not met the legal obligation required by the Waste Framework Directive to regulate the waste water generated in our unsewered areas. This was followed by a lump-sum fine in 2012 of €2 million and a daily fine of €12,000 due to Ireland’s failure to comply with the judgement. In 2013, the EPA produced the National Inspection Plan for Domestic Waste Water Treatment Systems. In the first year, 987 inspections were carried out in the first year and almost 50% of the systems failed and this figure rose to almost 80% for septic tanks greater than 50 years old. Nearly 70% of septic tanks were installed before more stringent EPA standards were introduced in 2000 and the introduction of the updated EPA Code of Practice in 2009 effectively eliminated large areas of the country for new unsewered one-off dwellings.

There has been very little official acknowledgement of the sheer scale of the problem which has been allowed to develop over successive decades. A regulatory impact assessment prepared for the Government in 2007 estimated that the cost of remediating septic tanks would cost rural families in the region of €7,000 to €25,000 per dwelling, with an overall potential cost of €3 billion. This excludes ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. The taxpayer is underwriting these costs through a grant scheme which allows homeowners to claim up to €4,000 towards the cost of retrofitting septic tanks. However, even these figures are based on a conservative assumption that just one-third of septic tanks in the country are not working properly. In light of the studies carried out to date, it is very reasonable to assume that this significantly underestimates the total cost.

Social Cohesion

The most common and well-rehearsed argument put forward in favour of one-off housing is that it is a ‘traditional’ characteristic feature of Irish heritage and vital for the maintenance of vibrant rural communities, preventing depopulation and supporting the economic, cultural, social and sporting lifestyle of rural Ireland. However, although a superficially appealing proposition, it does not follow that simply building more dispersed houses maintains vibrant rural communities. The relationship is far more complex and less inevitable than various lobby groups presume. Many rural regions with the highest instances of one-off dwellings and few larger urban settlements, are the regions with higher levels of deprivation.

The case for the social benefits of scattered dwellings for maintaining local communities is, at best, unproven. Although Ireland has a strong rural idyll, it must be noted that during the 19th and early 20th century Irish rural dwellers were almost overwhelming poor with a low life expectancy, lived in poorly built thatched cottages, had no running water or flush toilets, were subsistence farmers and imposed almost no demands on the State. In the 21st Century, modern one-off rural dwellers legitimately require a whole range of costly and complex services including healthcare, social services, education, paved roads for transport, electricity, telecommunications and sanitary services, all of which are much more costly to deliver at lower population densities.

It is also necessary to sharply differentiate between one-off suburban sprawl around urban centres (accounting for 70%+ of incidences) and the more sentimental Irish rural housing idyll – a distinction which is rarely made. For the past 50 years, rural Ireland has undergone a continued transformation of one-off housing proliferation. However, rural decline and disadvantage continues to be a persistent issue, requiring ongoing initiatives, such as the Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas. It stands to reason, therefore, and based on the evidence of the past 50 years, increasing dispersed settlement patterns does not reverse rural decline.

As Ireland’s population ages and younger people migrate to cities, the occurrence of acute social problems, such as rural isolation, loneliness and the instances of suicide are growing. The Offaly County Coroner, for example, has labelled the high prevalence of suicide in rural Ireland as “rampant”. A simple example is that stricter drink driving laws have undermined the viability of rural pubs, key linchpins in rural social life, due to the fact that it is difficult to get to pubs without a car. It would be evidently easier to maintain social cohesion, prevent out-migration, preserve sporting lifestyles and underpin services vital for rural life, if people lived closer together and could walk to local amenities.

As noted by the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, rural communities are (rightly) worried about the seemingly constant threat to rural institutions, such as Garda stations, schools and post offices and the lack of proper infrastructure which are critical to maintaining communities. However, what is never acknowledged is that it is dispersed housing itself which greatly amplifies the problems in providing these services. For example, parts of Ireland are considered simply ‘too rural’ for effective ambulance cover, which puts people’s lives at risk. Irish Rail has attributed the need for the closure of rail services, such as the Rosslare-Waterford rail line, to the low population densities and absence of urban centres to underpin demand. The lack of population centres also means that acute hospital services are unviable, meaning that people must travel long distances. For example, more than 400,000 people in Ireland live more than 1-hour drive from radiotherapy services. Given the greater range of shops and facilities offered in large towns and cities, and much better road networks, it is more likely that people simply bypass local towns and villages, further eroding local shops and services which are vital for maintaining vibrant and healthy rural communities.

Alternative Solutions

The Irish planning system, and public policy more generally, has consistently failed to devise alternative rural housing models. Like many societies, Irish people have a strong attachment to place and a desire to live near the place where they grew up. The ability to design and self-build a family dwelling to personal specification at an affordable cost in the countryside as a pathway to home ownership is a key driver of Ireland’s dispersed settlement pattern. The challenge for public policy is how to accommodate this demand at least cost to the taxpayer; ensure that minimum quality of essential services can be delivered; sustain rural populations; and bolster the rural economy.

Acknowledging the issues associated with dispersal, in 2008 Limerick County Council introduced a policy to help strengthen and consolidate rural towns and villages. The Council’s ‘Policy on Serviced Residential Sites in Towns and Villages’, now incorporated into the County Development Plan, recognises that there is a need to provide an option for people to upsize and to be able to build a house to their own design and layout on a larger site, yet within walking distance of amenities such as schools, churches, sports facilities and shops etc.

However, for many small rural towns and villages the absence or inadequacy of water supply and waste-water infrastructure has proved an obstacle. In order to overcome this deficit, the council introduced a parallel ‘Small Towns and Villages Initiative’ which promotes a partnership approach to the provision of water and waste-water infrastructure. In settlements where adequate public waste-water treatment facilities are available, the council’s policy supports serviced sites within or immediately adjoining the settlement, subject to normal planning and environment criteria.

Where no, or inadequate, public waste-water treatment facilities exist, serviced sites within or immediately adjoining the settlement are supported where waste-water treatment facilities are planned. Serviced site developments on 0.20 hectares (½ acre) plots with individual treatment systems will be required as a temporary measure, until such time as waste-water facilities become available. The serviced sites must be designed to permit the subdivision of each of the 0.20 hectare plots into two 0.10 hectare sites once adequate services become available. The residual land can then be developed for additional serviced sites in the future.

The council policy provides that lands will be specifically identified for serviced residential sites. A masterplan will be required to be produced by the developer/landowner during the planning application stage showing the overall layout, house design guidelines, roads, services and landscaping for the serviced sites. Full planning permission must be sought by the developer/landowner for the site layout and development works and outline permission for the individual houses. The individual serviced sites must then be made available for sale to applicants wishing to build the house of their own design.

In order to overcome the barrier to new development in small settlements, the council’s ‘Small Towns and Villages Initiative’ aims to contribute towards the cost of a sewage treatment plant which is provided by a private developer and which meets the needs of the existing population of the town or village, the needs of the new development proposed and some additional reserve capacity for future developments.

Limerick County Council’s serviced sites policy is a rare example of proposals to address the problems presented by increasingly scattered rural housing development. The idea has now been integrated into the recently published draft National Planning Framework and is conforms with renewed national policy to bolster small rural towns and villages.

However, such a policy will not be successful if it is discretionary and will only work in the following circumstances:

The policy must be accompanied by simultaneous policies to restrict new one-off housing in the surrounding open countryside exclusively to those with a genuine rurally generated local economic need (i.e. are directly working in local agriculture, forestry etc). At present, the hidden incentives in favour of new dispersed housing remain entrenched in tax, property and planning codes. Without intervention measures to direct new housing demand to small rural towns and villages, the current proliferating trends will remain unchecked. Such measures could include removing tax incentives; introducing a Land Value Tax system. offering tax credits to farmers for agreeing to maintain land as farmland; buying development rights from farmers; implementing green belt policies, changing the development levy system to capture real costs, using Water Management Units to introduce local environmental carrying capacity restrictions for ‘septic tanks’ etc.

The policy is still reliant on private developers/landowners to bring forward land within small towns and rural villages for serviced sites. Instead of a private developer-led approach, local councils should be mandated through government policy to directly acquire suitable land in small rural towns and villages to deliver serviced sites. This approach is consistent with the recommendations of the Kenny Report in 1974 (Committee on the Price of Building Land, 1974). The central idea of the Kenny Report was that landowners would be paid the existing use value of the land, plus an additional 25 per cent. Local councils would then be tasked with masterplanning and servicing the lands and selling the sites as appropriate.

The provision by the state of serviced sites is not a new idea. However, it has been persistently shunned in favour of a highly dispersed and costly settlement pattern. The major challenge in implementing such a policy is two-fold. Firstly, there needs to be recognition at the highest levels of government that settlement policy and regional development policy are inextricably linked. For most of the past fifty years this reality has been absent from all levels of government. Secondly, there needs to be a distinct move away from the customary laissez faire permissive approach to rural settlement policy a new interventionist approach where local council’s use their statutory powers to steer spatial development in the wider long-term public interest.

Recent policy changes offer some glimmer of hope, but prospects for such a transformation in institutional and political mindsets remains limited.