Oisín Coghlan

And secondly, the desire for people to be able to live near where they grew up or where they have social ties.

But there is there are trade offs with this because it and Brenda acknowledges this herself in her article.

because it makes services more expensive.

And you mentioned services and ribbon development.

I'm guessing that that would have been another septic tank as opposed to mains water.

Well, in that case, I've seen if there's mains water supply, that seems to be ridiculous.

I agree.

That seems to be... And that's something they're looking at now, isn't it?

But...

Public transport, electricity, all of these things cost more when we have a very dispersed population.

And the planning framework that is still in place says we want to encourage denser development around towns and villages in rural Ireland.

And we hear correctly that rural towns are declining and there's no living above the shop.

So we can't do both.

We can't say you can build any way you like.

You're not buttressing up a village if you have houses.

Not if...

Not if there's no safe paths to walk into the village.

Not if there's no good public transport.

It makes public transport more expensive.

Six out of ten of the septic tanks the EPA tested last year failed the test.