Kilian Doyle finds that the Irish Academy of Engineering's vision of the future is fascinating stuff, painting as it does a (reasonably) rosy picture of motoring in Ireland in 2050.
These people are evidently intelligent types whose forecast is based on sound reasoning. And not paranoid doomsayers like Emissions here, who has an entirely different take.
It's Ireland, 2049. The National Spatial Strategy has gone the way of democracy, trees and being able to see sunsets - into the annals of history.
The US has invaded every oil-producing nation on the planet - Venezuela, Nigeria, Norway, Russia have all been subsumed into the United States of Everywhere. Even Britain has surrendered its North Sea oil platforms in exchange for the kindly protection of the US from imaginary invaders from space.
Efforts to introduce (most) alternative fuels have been mercilessly quashed until the US wrings every last drop of oil from the planet.
The only oil in Ireland was discovered in the back garden of an ageing rockstar in Killiney in 2041. This worthy fellow signed over the rights to the oil to the US in exchange for the secret to eternal life. He is now Emperor of Éire. What used to be Ireland's Government is now a mere franchise of US Inc, licensed to dispense Bono Corp fuel and execute siphoners.
Practically the whole of Ireland is a car park. Roads serve only to connect these car parks, and are used solely by fuel trucks, which are guarded by battalions of robots armed with vaporisers.
There are no houses anymore. The property market crash of 2042 - when prices fell by 8,500% in a year - put paid to that. The land on which the houses were built became infinitely more valuable as parking spaces. So all homes were razed to the ground. All former apartment blocks are now high-rise car parks. All of which is handy, because everyone lives in cars.
Petrol costs €163,000 a litre. The price is incidental, as nobody goes anywhere anymore. The fuel is piped straight from taps underneath every car and is primarily used to power the electricity generators.
Most citizens divert tiny amounts of petrol fumes into their cars, which they inhale, finding as they do that it alleviates their misery slightly. This is officially illegal, but the government turns a blind eye. A stoned population is a subservient population.
The carless and the cyclists have formed an Underground Resistance, living on rafts on the few rivers and lakes left untouched. They make occasional land forays to forage. These are dangerous missions, not to be undertaken lightly - the sight of them gliding effortlessly through parked cars, their hair flowing in the black sooty air, is enough to drive even the most sedated car-bound citizen into fits of homicidal jealous rage.
Cars are massive three-room behemoths. All are fitted with virtual reality consoles - plug yourself in and you are immediately anywhere you like at any time in history, from the mythical beaches of Wicklow (now a radioactive sludge dump) to the Burren (now a truck graveyard). It makes a nice change from sniffing fumes.
Everyone works from their home. Which, as mentioned above, is their car. But their work is merely a blip in their real purpose, which is to consume. They don't actually do anything useful. Most of them are journalists.
They communicate with others through silicon chips inside their heads. There is no social interaction whatsoever, except when they are being fed. Specially-bred tiny men on tiny motorbikes deliver all food. Food is free. It is in the government's interest to make people as fat as possible.
There is no exercise. Everyone just gets fatter and fatter until they either get a bigger car to accommodate them or die. All corpses are handed over to the government, which renders their fat. The reality is that humans are only of any value when they are dead - they become fuel. And when the oil runs out, there's plenty of humans to go around...