"How will we know it's Ireland?" asks Terry O'Regan, organiser of the Landscape Forum 1998, to be held at Maynooth in September. And he goes on to say, in his prospectus, that while the Celtic Tiger gives us the means of doing great things, he hopes our uniqueness will not be "subsumed into a mess of `zoological' national parks" and our cultural heritage "on display in Disneyesque techni-color still life."
Of course, he and everyone else knows that landscape-changes and must change, but the change needs to be looked at, and perhaps steered, with caution. An interdepartmental committee under Jimmy Deenihan met in May 1997 to try to develop an interdepartmental approach, but apparently has not been reconvened O'Regan points to the great welcome given to that mine of information and enlightenment The Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, edited by F.H.A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan and Matthew Stout, as showing that many of our people are indeed aware of our inheritance and are interested in seeing it made subject to informed supervision.
Each person has his or her bugbears. Many hate the sight of conifer plantations climbing up hills that they admired for their very barrenness. Yet others mourn the fact that poor soil is left unplanted. Again, the lines of new houses along certain parts of the Connemara coastline are number one excrescence to others. The spread of Dublin worries many. A big commuterland is in the growing from Dublin to Dunshaughlin to Navan to Kells. Dunshaughlin is growing daily, it seems; Navan has huge apartment blocks along the river. Some adaptations of old buildings. Kells developers tell you it's not much more than an hour to Dublin (maybe at 5 a.m. on a summer day), and stress the green fields and relatively clean rivers. The evening traffic going from Dublin is sometimes frightening.
A fine book Reading the Irish Landscape by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan shows two views of Glenadalough, County Wicklow. One, wooded, as it is today; a second black and white view of it in the early 19th century shows it stripped of timber for fuel and charcoal. Nothing stands still. There are many other aspects of the subject and no doubt there will be time to come back. Terry O'Regan, Landscape Alliance, Old Abbey Gardens, Waterfall, Cork. Tel. 021-871460. Y