Letters to the Editor: All I wanted to do was build a modest home on a modest patch of land left to me by my grandmother

Irish Examiner

16-06-2025

I never thought I'd be the type to write to a newspaper. But here I am — 28 years old, from the West of Ireland, still living in my childhood bedroom, asking permission from the Government to exist.
You see, all I wanted to do was build a modest home on a modest patch of land left to me by my grandmother, a woman who knew me better than the planning authority ever will.
It's on a quiet cul-de-sac, five minutes from work, a couple of minutes from my parents' house, and literally beside my grandmother's old home, she passed about five years ago and left this lovely perfect site to me, my aunt lives there now and relies on me daily.
The cows know me by name. But apparently, that's not local enough.
Back in February 2024, I applied for outline planning permission.
Not full permission — just the flippin' outline, a whisper of a suggestion that I might, in the far-flung future, get to build.
Fourteen months later, a letter arrived (probably delivered by a man on horseback, given the speed of Irish bureaucracy): Rejected. Why?
Because I don't rear cattle, pick oysters, chop down trees, or grow carrots for a living (so called Irish green belt policy to prevent the encroachment of development, unless you are involved in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, or agriculture).
And because the site isn't 'immediately adjacent' to my parent's home — as if I was proposing to build on the moon and not within a 4km radius of everything I've ever known and loved; 120 seconds from my family home where I still live with my parents in my childhood room despite making an effort to move out.
I was gutted. My grandmother wanted me to live there. I've poured my time into the community. I volunteer, I teach water safety to kids, I pay my taxes. And still, I was told: No. It felt like a slap in the face, followed by a pat on the head, and a 'best of luck in Australia'.
Then came the anger. I looked around and saw accommodation popping up like mushrooms after rain — not for people like me, but for immigrants and asylum seekers.
'What about me?' I thought. 'How is that housing allowed, while I can't even build on a non-scenic, fully serviced field passed to me by my nan?'
I won't lie — I started to drift. I liked angry Facebook posts. I watched protest videos and thought: 'Well, they're not wrong.'
But then, something small happened that felt big.
I dropped an important work envelope near one of the local International Protection Accommodation Service centres.
A young boy ran out waving and laughing and gave it back to me, all smiles.
His parents smiled too. Polite, warm people — probably fleeing God-knows-what back home.
I stood there and stared at them. And it hit me like a tonne of bricks: They're not the problem. They're not responsible for the insane planning laws that keep Irish people off Irish land. They're not responsible for a Government that couldn't organise a house party in a housing estate. They just want what I want — a roof, a future, safety for their kids.
And suddenly I wasn't angry at them anymore. I was just angry at the system that's failing us all.
Because, let's be honest, this country is eating its young.
More than 70% of young Irish adults believe they'll never own a home. Over half of 25- to 29-year-olds still live at home — not out of laziness, but because rent is a joke, mortgages are a fantasy, and planning permission is like winning the Lotto (except with less chance of success and more paperwork).
I know people who've left and aren't coming back. Smart, skilled people. Good people. People who wanted to live and work here. Gone. And the next wave is packing their bags as we speak.
Planning policy is just one cog in a wheel that's rolling straight over my generation. We're not asking for mansions or palaces — just a chance to live near our families, on land that means something to us.
But instead, we're met with 14-month silences and a big red stamp that says 'NO': No to roots; no to community; no to staying.
And in the void, the far right is finding space. Not because people are hateful, but because people are hurt, desperate, and forgotten. The more the Government fails to act, the more people turn to someone — anyone — who promises change, even if it comes wrapped in bitterness and blame.
But we have to resist that. The boy who handed me back my envelope reminded me that decency still matters.
That scapegoating vulnerable people won't get me planning permission. That a better Ireland won't come from division, but from pressure — pressure on those in power to stop gatekeeping the future from the very people meant to inherit it.
I may never get to build on that land. But I'll keep trying. And I'll keep speaking out — not just for me, but for every young person told they're not local enough, not rural enough, not worthy enough. We're not statistics. We're not naive. And we're not going away.
Chris Nicholson, via email
Genocide in Gaza
When I was 17 I read a book about the Bosnian-Serb conflict. It featured a man in the besieged Sarajevo who played his cello in a courtyard every day.
He played in memory of the women, men, and children who died in front of his house in a bomb attack, in that same courtyard, as they queued for bread rationings at the bakery.
In 2017, I visited Bosnia, as part of my Erasmus programme to Croatia.
In Sarajevo, I saw the bullet holes in the buildings, the fields on the edge of town lined with white unmarked pillars representing the dead, and my friend and I cried in the museum which displayed the horrors of what happened there.
100,000 people died and 80% of those were Bosnian Muslims.
It went on for four years, and I wondered at that point, how did it go on for so long? In the 1990s? How did no one intervene? Surely that could never happen again.
Now in 2025, we fail to identify history repeating itself as we watch the genocide of the Palestinians, and this time there is no way to defend not knowing, we see it on our screens everyday.
In years to come the next generation will ask, how come there was no intervention?
Why did no one stop them? I wonder will there be anything left of Gaza and its people. How many unmarked graves will they need to represent their dead?
Aisling Brady, Drumcondra, Dublin 9
Make your life lucky
I believe in the principle of being able to create one's own luck.
So if a person avoids having any knives, guns, blades, combustible items, needles, hard surfaces, and anything with a jagged edge in their own house, then very likely no harm will ever come to anyone in their house — not even by some kind of rare accident.
Then if, on the other hand, one should fill all of one's house with materials that have a bouncy texture to them, along with soft brushes, soft crayons, small canisters of different coloured paints, and many bells and buttons which can make all kinds of beautiful sounds, then surely only wonderful and lucky things will always happen to them.
This way, pain or hurt will be very unlikely be caused to anyone inside one's house. The only accidents that will occur will be happy and creative accidents.
This is because with soft crayons close by, one's fingertips one will find oneself almost against one's own wishes itching to draw something nice upon a wall.
Then also by just strolling along in any room one will inevitably walk upon a music making bell or a button and so joyfully create like Neil Diamond a 'beautiful sound'.
Then with the help of some friends and also the new technology of AI all one needs to do now is to give this beautiful sound which you have surprisingly created 'a tune to match it'.
I think there is a great lesson here about how to be lucky very often which should be meant for our own society as a whole.
This lesson is to make sure that we all have as many beautiful and safe things around us as much as possible instead of unthinkingly having things which are apt to do, very sadly, in time, ugly things to us?
Sean O'Brien, Kilrush, Co Clare
Care home watch
In many food processing plants in Ireland there are full-time Department of Agriculture Inspectors whose job is to ensure that rules and regulations are adhered to.
They have the authority to shut down lines when a problem arises, they are not answerable to the owners of the plant.
The cost of having them on site is recouped from the owners of the processing plants.
Would it not be possible to have a qualified person in a care home full-time to ensure nothing like what we witnessed on the RTÉ Investigates programme would reoccur?
That person would be there for the protection of staff and patients and would be paid for by the Department of Health who could recoup that expense from the owner of the nursing homes.
The benefits of having eyes and ears permanently in those homes would be immeasurable.
It may sound like a drastic measure but when we are revisiting a problem most of us thought was no longer an issue maybe drastic measures are all that will work or is food safety more important than old age and abuse.
John Higgins, Ballina, Co Mayo
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