Celtic Tiger could hurt our heritage more than Cromwell, says Marc Coleman.
Where Oliver Cromwell and the Famine just about failed, the housing market may finally be about to succeed. I took myself off to An Ceathru Rua recently (Carraroe to the more Anglicised amongst you) to learn cupla focail for a week. There I witnessed the occurrence of something that not even Oliver Cromwell would have wished upon the people of Connaught. Wicked tyrant though he was, even he left native Irish speakers in peace to enjoy there culture west of the Shannon. Not so the housing market. Crueller than Cromwell and more furious than the Famine, the increase in property prices in Galway city is creating a relentless push west along the Galway coast road, pushing back the borders of the Gaeltacht to the very fringes of the county.
Not that I am from that part of the country myself. Quite the opposite. When not spent in a fiercely Protestant town in southern Germany, my childhood was spent in Sandymount; probably the diametric opposite of An Ceathru Rua, geographically and culturally.
Outside of Dún Laoghaire (Kingstown, if you please) Sandymount was up until the 1970s one of the last bastions of Protestant Dublin. Just as growing up in Connemara would have been, living there was a privilege. I got to know little old ladies with names like Myrtle and Penelope who wore flower pot hats, went to the local Methodist church and watched the Queen's speech at Christmas. More so than Protestants of other parts of Dublin, these had been a more integrated part of Dublin life from an earlier time. The roll call in my primary school boasted names like Carpenter, Birmingham, Sadlier, Ironmonger and Manchester. These were the descendants of men who came here hundreds of years ago to fight as cavaliers and roundheads, only to dismount their steeds and marry local catholic girls.
William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Noel Purcell drank there and Seamus Heaney still lives there. Like An Ceathru Rua but at the opposite end of a once rich spectrum of Irish life, Sandymount had soul. Then along came the property boom. As the stockbrokers, barristers and new elites moved in in the late 1990s, many of my generation (including myself) were forced out and, in our turn, we displaced others who could not afford to live where we could afford to but did not really want to. Don't misunderstand me; wanting to live in Sandymount, I might be accused of snobbery. But I'm no snob: like any true Dub I love the neighbourhood I was born in and would like to live there.
From the east to the west of the country, however, a domino effect of social displacement has uprooted waves of property refugees from local networks of family, friends and things that are familiar. As it reaches the far western point of the country, it has given rise to a dog's breakfast of scattered bungalows in rural Ireland: future attempts to provide cohesive communities or cost-efficient public services will be seriously hampered as a result of it. The cultural impact is even more devastating. As I occupied the cottage I had rented, I wondered about whether I was a contributor to this process. Sure I was going to An Ceathru Rua to learn Irish. But by renting a cottage I was contributing to the spray paint development of the place. I was also, however unintentionally and indirectly, helping to make it more difficult for young locals to buy property and start families in their own locality without resorting to building more bungalows on isolated and badly serviced land.
Thankfully because of improvements in the teaching of Irish and the existence of TG4, the Irish language will survive as the virtual Gaeltacht emerges. But a real Gaeltacht is needed also: it will be a devastating indictment of this Government's approach to planning if the Celtic Tiger is allowed to devour its own heritage. ... mcoleman@irish-times.ie
Marc Coleman is Economics Editor ofThe Irish Times
