North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Safe as houses

The news that the planning guidelines for one-off houses are to be 'relaxed' isn't thought to have much impact in Galway - the rules are already pretty laissez-faire. Last year, 76,000 houses in Ireland were built - twice the number of 1997. Every one in three houses standing in the Republic didn't exist before 1992. That's a lot of bank managers helping you to sign yourself into penury, a lot of plumbers promising they'll be around tomorrow, and a hell of a lot of solicitors dragging out the exchange of contracts to justify their conveyancing fees. By contrast, our nearest neighbour, with a mere fifteen times more people crammed into Blighty, managed to build roughly two and a half times as many houses (here's a speech given by John Prescott, Minister for Building Houses and Punching Tories - it reads better if you imagine him spluttering through it). Still, all those houses must mean that the price has come down, eh ? Hmmm....