Bookies say Norris is slipping in race for presidency

THE controversy surrounding David Norris's sexual beliefs has severely dented his presidential chances, according to bookies.

The senator, below, was the long-time favourite but the odds on him winning have now drifted out to 4/1 from 5/4 just a few weeks ago.

It has been a volatile week in betting for the presidency with Gay Mitchell having surged from a rank outsider at 100/1 at the start of the week to 9/2 fourth favourite today.

Paddy Power's Ken Robertson suggests that "Gay Mitchell is the one to keep an eye on. His odds have only been going in one direction".

"We reduced his odds to 66/1 on Tuesday and had to cut it to 9/2 today."

Pat Cox became the bookies favourite almost as soon as he entered the race and is currently at 6/4, despite the fact that the Fine Gael candidate has yet to be named.

"It now looks set to be a head to head contest between Mitchell and Cox with Mary McGuinness sliding to third favourite win that contest."

Michael D. Higgins has remained a constant throughout at second favourite, occasionally going ahead of Norris and staying second when Cox entered the fray. Niall O'Dowd and Fergus Finlay could also be good outsiders.

Another Plan for the Carlisle Pier in Dun Laoghaire

A MASTERPLAN to overhaul Dun Laoghaire Harbour could create as many as 1,000 new jobs.

The highlight of the ambitious €230m plan will be an International Diaspora Centre in place of the dismantled Mail Boat Terminal on Carlisle Pier.

Harbour authorities also want to develop a berthing facility for Next Generation Cruise Ship.

However, some residents are not happy with what they see as the exploitation of the existing local amenity.

Some opposition to the plan is already mounting and a protest march is being planned for Monday to coincide with a meeting of the Harbour Company.

Local architect and chairperson of the Sandycove-Glasthule residents associations Paul O’Callaghan told Herald that “some local people will be unhappy about the commercialisation of a public amenity”.

With Stena HSS fastcraft sailings having reduced from a peak of three to just one sailing a day, the Harbour company is looking to new ways to generate income.

The masterplan will go on public display this Saturday and Sunday from 12 noon to 6pm in the terminal building at the harbour.

Gerry Dunne, the Chief Executive Office of the Harbour Board says “the Masterplan will position Dun Laoghaire Harbour as a marine, leisure and tourism destination of international calibre”.

Some €230m is to be invested in the proposed scheme which hopes to create 1,000 jobs through tourism, marine services and retail over the next 10-15 years.

There is history of confrontation between locals and the harbour authorities over proposed developments in the area.

During the boom, an imposing design for Carlisle Pier by Heneghan Peng Architects was to include a 127 bed hotel, 229 apartments, retail and leisure facilities and a floating stage.

The proposal for a ten storey apartment block surrounded by the low-rise Victorian buildings on the seafront was met with much local opposition.

Similarly a proposal for apartments at the site of the Dun Laoghaire Baths was met with a petition 14,000 signatures against the development in 2004.

This time around a series of public consultations session have already taken place for the proposal and information was offered through a dedicated section of the harbour website and at public meetings.

A survey of people walking the popular East Pier has also taken place.

Minister for Transport, Mr Leo Varadkar has visited the harbour to inspect the model and drawings of the proposed scheme.

The development could tie into a scaled back proposal for nearby Sandycove at the dilapidated baths near the base of the East Pier, as well as proposals for a library near the Royal Marine Hotel.

Dun Laoghaire harbour was first built in the 19th Century response to a maritime disaster in which the 400 sailors lost their lives when they were driven onto rocks between Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire while attempting to navigate out of Dublin Bay.

Fears over sale of forests aren't going away

McCarthy report says the State should start selling off Coillte's forestry and non-forestry assets, but not its forest land. It says unforested land that Coillte does not need should also be sold.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0420/mccarthy.html

Little to do: Revisited

In November of last year the Social Welfare office on the Navan Road was dotted with twenty-somethings inclined to creative aspirations spurred by the whip of the dole queue. Saturated with supposed gloom to look forward to, these young people chose to explore the opportunities put upon them. We are perhaps still waiting for the Commitments cinema moment to encapsulate the mood of a nation, though the recession-induced creativity from which that film was spawned is doing similar things in the depths of this downturn. For that group of young people spoken to in the signing-on queue on the second Wednesday of the month back in November things have changed.

Young people across every strand of society have effectively been afforded two options. The easy option (for those without obligations) is to leave; with the road less travelled being the one at home. For those who stay, finding a means or reason to hang about can be difficult but in that difficulty there germinates an artistry and enterprise that bodes well for this country’s future. With the improving weather, and buoyed by a thorough spring clean in Dáil Eireann, it seems a there is an optimism about the air now, perhaps only a glimmer yet, but it does seem to be there.

A return to the bright and airy social welfare office on the Navan Road finds that an improvement in circumstances, albeit not necessarily a financial one. Back in November, they who were supposed to have little to do were investing time and energy into personal pursuits which are now yielding reward. Rather than continue to waste their educations in welfare lines, these particular twenty-something graduates have seen some fruition to the creative endeavours induced on them.

Graduate architect Robin Jardine had been experimenting with cider-making in November, deciding to take a sabbatical from a career in architecture for the time being. Since then the cider has matured, and there are but four or five bottles left of the last batch remaining. He took the lack of jobs in a profession with 70% unemployment as an opportunity to see if making cider was something he could do. He collected wine and beer bottles, designed and made three different labels for each different cider and distributed them amongst his friends and family. He has gone on to do a two-month apprenticeship with cider maker David Llewellyn at Lusk in north County Dublin. He still sees cider as more of a hobby than enterprise, though if circumstance were different he says he may reconsider.

Carl Giffney is a recent NCAD graduate, and he along with Ruth Lyons have been taking part in the restoration of 18th Century Clonearl House on the Westmeath-Offally border in return for which they are afforded a studio base from where they can work. Eileen Hanlon owns the property and has a vision to restore it and set up a variety of creative uses occupied in the complex of buildings on site. She proposes that the former workshop, brewhouse and painthouse could all be re-imagined as creative spaces, artisan workshops, forges, photographers’ or artists’ studios and even a return to brewing. Indeed Robin Jardine has considered the possibility of using the recently planted Clonearl orchard for his next batch of cider.

For those others spoken to last November not quite as lent to artisan pursuits, though no less creative ones, many of their situations have also changed for the better. Roisín Grimes will not be attending today. She had previously been volunteering with Citywise in Ballymun between sending out cvs, she still visits but has since been accepted and begun a full-time masters degree in primary school teaching. Kieran Flood had also been forced to volunteer to occupy time between job rejections. He spent some time learning his profession with the Irish Wildlife Trust but is expecting March to be his last visit to the Navan Road welfare office for quite a while as he has been commissioned by the Trust to undertake broadened reports on the declining newt population of Ireland.

Since signing-on day in the Navan Road Social Welfare office last November and this week in mid-March, currents statistics say that in the region of 20,000 young people will have emigrated. That is a lot of wasted talent. By some good grace though, some are choosing (or even trying) to stay and exploring all pipedreams and opportunities as they ‘emerge’ as adults. In this post-election optimism, the mess remains though now there appears some semblance of hope where young people clutch at straws yielding all sorts of possibility.

Fears over sale of Irish forests

Fears over another Government give away of Ireland’s precious natural resources haven’t gone with Fianna Fáil’s departure from public power. With profits from oil, gas and mineral rights having already been bizarrely offloaded by successive governments, it is now the turn of our forest holdings to be offered into the grabbing hands of foreign investment companies. Their counterparts in Britain were forced into an embarrassing u-turn on the very same issue, and now our incoming government are leading us to believe that they will not be so foolish in taking the reins from their perpetually dishonest predecessors.

Coillte’s value is estimated to be in excess of €1.2bn; a figure arrived at largely down to the value of the land rather than the trees and amounts to 7% of land in the State. The sale of Coillte land will provide much needed funds to a coalition inheriting a cash-strapped Department of Finance, but is considered ill advised by many professionals in the environment sector. It is the International Forestry Fund, chaired by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who are believed to be the first in line of foreign investors waiting to snap up the valuable Irish territory. The company are based in Switzerland and are principally financed by the Irish Forestry Fund and Helvetica Wealth AG of Switzerland who use their base in Liechtenstein and Switzerland as a marketing ploy to attract investors with the benefits of offshore bank accounts. The China Investment Corporation are also said to have expressed an interest.

UCD economist Colm McCarthy has once already recommended to the Government that Coillte be sold to private companies, along with many other important and valuable state assets. His imminent follow-up report is expected to say the very same to the newly formed coalition.

7% of land in the state is equivalent to twice the size of County Meath, so the prospect of our Government giving over so much to foreign investment companies is perhaps understandably worrying for Irish citizens already embarrassed into offering our sovereignty to Brussels and Berlin. The sale of semi-state bodies did feature prominently during the general election campaign with Labour and Fine Gael both committing to the retention of Irish forests by the State. However, outgoing Energy Minister Pat Carey’s eleventh hour grant of permission to Shell to lay the last of the Corrib gas line leaves you wondering what other surprises Fianna Fáil have left for their successors.

Andrew St Ledger, an Environment Pillar representative for the NGO CELT (Centre for Environmental Learning and Training) and the Woodland League, has been trying to raise awareness on the issue for seven years now. As well as his concerns over the potential sale of Coillte lands, he also has issue with the “nefarious practices” of the semi-state body itself, describing their activities as “the singular most destructive activity on the Irish Environment.” They employ unsustainable practices such as “clearfelling and chemical applications, yet have been protected by vested interests for many years as the Forestry Industry is run by the Pension fund companies,” he said.

St Ledger says there are a number of vested interests at work here, not least of which are the many thousands of people who have invested in the last six forestry funds whole heartedly believing that they were engaging in environmentally sound activity. “It is understandably difficult for them to accept the truth about what their money has been used for,” he said. Using tree farms of chemically dependent trees is a global phenomenon and said to be the primary activity of the International Forestry Fund. Furthermore, what is critical to greedy investment company plans in attaining these woodland assets are mining rights and the emerging, is the emerging, and extremely lucrative, carbon trading market.

When Coillte was set up in the early 90s, it conducted a geological survey of the land underneath the forests. The mineral deposits beneath the trees are understood to be extremely valuable. Coillte are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and as such only a handful of people have ever seen the report; among those people though is the Finance Minister, an office the current chair of the International Forestry Fund held at the time of the survey. In the office of Taoiseach, Mr Ahern would also have been the person charged with appointing most of the directors to the board of Coillte.

The sell-off or Ireland’s resources has been a common trend in Fianna Fáil-led governments and with the former Taoiseach himself. Deals made between Charles Haughey’s government and multinational oil companies means all wealth raised from oil or gas in Ireland leaves it. In 1987 corrupt Minister Ray Burke bizarrely changed the law to reduce the State’s share in offshore oil and gas from 50% to zero and abolished royalties, and then in 1992 Finance Minister Bertie Ahern reduced the tax rate for profits made from the sale of these resources from 50% to 25% while the international average stands at around 68%. And finally, Pat Carey’s signing off of the Corrib gas line on Election Day marked what many considered one last act of treason in giving the go ahead for Shell to build infrastructure that will pump gas from the west coast to their interconnectors in Britain.

The outgoing Government actions on this issue concerned the setting of a Review Group on State Assets, under the stewardship of an Bord Snip Nua author Colm McCarthy, to examine precisely what the value of our state companies are. Coillte is amongst the companies that the group is examining. The group's work is not yet completed, therefore it now ought to be for the Fine Gael-Labour Coalition Government to examine the findings and determine a course of action.

Fine Gael’s position on the matter isn’t entirely clear however. Agriculture spokesperson Andrew Doyle has said they don’t want to sell the forests. “Our vital national resources are not up for sale. National resources like forestry, agriculture and marine resources are held in trust for all the people of Ireland,” he said. Meanwhile his leader, and Taoiseach, Enda Kenny proposes to sell “non-strategic” State Assets and has been unspecific in explaining what exactly what that means.

During their time with the Environment and Energy portfolios in Government, the Green Party regularly stated that it made neither economic nor strategic sense to sell off state assets such as Coillte, and they saw it as critical in the evolution of the ‘Green’ Economy in terms of the biomass energy and environmental sectors and held the belief that state ownership was the best means to realise the ambition. The manner in which they were bullied throughout their term in office however did not see them command significant authority on the matter – particularly in regard to their capitulation in their ambitions to do with the ‘Shell to Sea’ campaign in Mayo.

As the General Election loomed at the end of January, Coillte invited tenders from economists to provide an economic evaluation of the public goods provided by their forest estate of 445,000 ha throughout Ireland. Spokesperson for Coillte, Tom Byrne explains that the purpose of the tender is simply part of the “new understanding behind the management of large areas of lands and ecosystems” in their stewardship. As to the timing of the notice of invitation to tender in the dying days of the Fianna Fáil-led government, with speculation over the privatisation of Irish forests and Pat Carey’s last gasp decision making, he said it was “purely coincidental”.

In response to allegations, the International Forestry Fund, as mentioned chaired by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern were quick to “unequivocally” say that they held no interest in acquiring any of the assets of Coillte. The company already operates commercial forests in Ireland and Scotland and is currently acquiring forest lands in Central America in which spokesperson Paul Brosnan claimed they are operating in line with international standards despite assertions to the contrary. They are adamant that their forestry assets are “managed in accordance with best forestry practice in a socially responsible manner,” they say they don’t engage in the monoculture or chemical fertilizers practices that they are widely accused of.

They also denied that they would even be interested in Coillte lands if indeed they were to become available which is rather a bizarre stance from a commercial entity whose primary concern is the forestry industry and even more bizarre considering that they did express an interest in buying Coillte in January of last year.

At the time of writing, Fine Gael had yet to say what obligations exactly Fianna Fáil had tied them into aside from the obvious financial targets agreed with those on mainland Europe, but as we are well aware, political promises are regularly found broken in election aftermaths.

Whiskey / Whisky

You ‘crack’ the whiskey with a droplet of water from a straw, swirl it in the glass and watch the ripples trickle down the walls inside. You smell the aroma of peat used for heating during the pot still distillation three years previously before it was placed in its oak cask where it waited until now. You drink and take the taste, it’s a smokey type of sensation and feels traditional for no other reason than you know people have been doing this for hundreds of years.

This used to happen in Ireland. It used to happen in Scotland. The difference between the two nations is that it still happens a lot in Scotland. Ireland lost its way in the age old craft of whiskey/whisky production – and a note here, there is more of a difference between the two than the subtlety of the spelling. There is an argument over where the famous Uisce Beatha was first produced, Ireland or Scotland, however there is no argument now over who is the contemporary industry leader.

Ireland’s range whiskey production has been reduced from its heyday at the start of the 20th century when there were up to 80 distilleries on the island to a point today where there are just four. Despite rumours of potential distilleries cropping up Belfast and Porterhouse’s work in Dingle, the charge is still being led and dominated by commercial giants Bushmills and Jameson. Two brands which tend to focus more on industrial output and large profits rather than the art of the traditional craft. The Cooley and Kilbeggan distilleries are more inclined to the way things were however, and Bushmills do still produce a single malt so the tradition has not been lost entirely. The situation in Scotland however is much different.
Scotland has more whisky regions than Ireland does actual distilleries. An undercurrent in the Scottish tourist industry has risen in reaction to the interest in its wide range of product, not too dissimilar from the manner in which the French wine industry is revered. Scotland has five single malt whisky regions; the less popular Lowlands; the sweeter Speyside; the rather varied Highlands, the heavily productive Speyside; the dry, peaty Islay and the full bodied Campbelltown. This large network was being built at the same time as Ireland was establishing itself as the best whiskey producer in the world, and whereas they Scots subsequently strengthened, Ireland unfortunately lost its way.

If you enjoy whiskey and you are in Edinburgh, go up to the castle for a look but don’t pay in, rather return to just before the end of the terrace of the Royal Mile. There’s an old school house there that has been turned into the largest whisky collection in the world. The Scotch Whisky Experience is an introduction to whisky for those unfamiliar with it, but it also serves those who want to learn more. There are plenty of other options around Edinburgh or Glasgow to sample without paying for a tour though
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Carla, our tour guide, from Barcelona has worked at the Scotch Whisky Experience for three years and has become something of an expert in her four years in Scotland. Diplomatically, she didn’t claim Scotch was better or invented before whiskey, but did appreciate that the traditional craft has been somewhat lost in Ireland and regularly mentioned our historical dominance.

The question you ask is what ever happened to whiskey? How did we go from supposedly being the best in the world at the craft, to a situation where it’s difficult to judge in a monopolised market? In the early 20th century, there were up to 80 legal distilleries in Ireland (excluding the unquantifiable poitín stills) at its height.
John Cashman from the Cooley Distillery in Louth explained how a number of events transpired to effectively destroy the craft distillers’ network in Ireland with independence from Britain forming the critical contextual event to what happened. Broadly speaking there were three reasons for the decline, chief among them was the temperance movement in the country. Here, there developed an inherent fear propagated by the Catholic Church that if you drank you would go to Hell – thus many chose not to. This would’ve been part of the problem, though the prevalence of Good Friday barbeques across the country in contemporary Ireland will lend a clue to historical every-single-day levels of temperance.

The second problem was modern technology. The column still technique of distillation was invented which enabled continuous production of the liquid and allowed for a larger-scale more productive output, although the quality was reduced. Irish distillers, preferring the traditional pot still procedure, refused to accept the change. Their counterparts in Scotland were more inventive however; they embraced the new technique and began blending this with single malts to produce a higher quality, more palatable drink. The result was a rise in popularity for Scotch distilleries, and as the Irish declined the Scots seized advantage and began buying up their Irish competitors.

The final contributor in the erosion of the once proud industry was down to the closing off of our two primary markets. One we slammed the door shut ourselves while the other was entirely out of our own hands. The resulting economic war between Ireland and Britain once the Free State was established saw the government of the time close ties with our closest neighbour, thus eliminating our largest export market for everything – including whiskey. In America where Irish whiskey held a 60% share of the market, prohibition was introduced. The culmination of these two events saw the a rapid decline in distilleries across the country from the peak of 80 in the early 20th century, down to six after World War II, to just four now with the most recent (Cashman’s employers and the first Irish-owned for some time) opening in Cooley in 1987.
The Cooley distillery hardly holds any of the old romance associated with the type of building one would presume – the Jameson visitor centre in Smithfield, Dublin springs to mind though no whiskey is actually produced there. The industrial shed in Louth was a formerly an ethanol plant, and was transformed in less than thirty years into a successful and respected distillery and cites its raison d’être as reviving old Irish brands and rediscovering the former tastes associated with Irish triple-distilled whiskey that some connoisseurs had come to describe as bland.

John Cashman is the Cooley Ambassador, and he explained how they produce the liquid in Cooley and the whiskey is then matured in oaked casks depending on their brand. The inevitable monopoly that arose when distilleries were reduced to just four saw triple-distilled as the product chosen for production, however Cooley have a much wider variety seeking in to reset connoisseurs preconceptions, describing the Irish whiskey they distil as being “full of character and flavour.”

You would hope that the best efforts of craft breweries and distilleries don’t get undone yet again and driven out of the market by aggressive monopolies. As swift as one may be to blame the callous Scotch distilleries for pouncing on Ireland’s misfortune, proud ‘Irish’ brands Guinness and Bulmers have historically been guilty of similar tactics with their competitors on the island. The hope among industry artisans is to bring variety to the market, and perhaps in the future re-establish Ireland’s former reputation for drink – that of the craft and not that of Copper Face Jacks on a Saturday night. The expectation would be that they wouldn’t get blinded by the lights of large scale, highly profitable monopolies again, although history has an unfortunate way of repeating itself in this country.

John Cashman explains how today it is difficult for distillers to get started as they will have to wait three years before seeing a return on their product and the setting up whiskey production is expensive. This in contrast to the craft brewing industry which has ‘exploded in Ireland of late,’ with the likes of Galway Hooker, Dungarvan Ale and the Hilden Brewers in Belfast seeing a resurgence in recent times. At the moment, the Porterhouse Brewing Company making a whiskey in Dingle and are to fund the interim three years by selling vodka and gin, however little has come of that as yet. Similarly in Belfast, there were rumours of a new distillery, unfortunately to date, rumours is all they appear to be. Even the whiskey being produced in the Kilbeggan in Westmeath as part of Cooley’s work isn’t going to be available for consumption until 2014.

According to Cashman, “Ireland’s whiskey is currently riding on the crest of a wave; it’s the fastest growing brown spirit in the world at the moment.” Although he placed a caveat on that, remarking that it is the Irish Distillers group impressive marketing campaigns fronted by Jameson that are the reason for the successes. Cooley are making inroads however, the near lost craft is being kept alive. The hope is to learn from the past, revive it where appropriate and be innovative where possible –the hope remains that this isn’t another element of Ireland’s unfortunate cyclical histories, because if it is the only other option is to just hop across to Scotland.

Sustainable Home

Story telling by a warm, turf burning, open hearth sets the scene of the tradition of old Ireland. Traditions change however, and as wholesome and as cherished a national delight as open turf fires are, they will have to go sooner rather than later. It’s not just the heart of the home changing though, Foxford Woollen Mill blankets and hot water bottles are hardly a standard of living to treasure in a bedroom of a severe winter. With whoever forms the next government, Green Party or no Green Party, looking to build the increasingly fashionable ‘green economy,’ sustainable and ecological considered design will be the means to achieve that.

The Fianna Fail led Government, with significant influence from their junior partners, had begun a process of making grants available to homeowners with a view to retrofitting houses to reduce domestic energy consumption. Creating jobs through new technologies seems a common trend of all elections these days, it was among Barack Obama’s promises in 2008 and our own political parties have followed suit in the current campaign (the less said about Enda Kenny’s attempt to reproduce Obama’s iconic ‘Hope’ image the better however). Taking Fine Gael and Labour’s promises at face value, it’s safe to assume that the new government will move forward with a similar strategy of retrofitting homes to lower their energy consumption rates. It is a dependable means to stem the decimation of construction sector employment, and inevitably create jobs for there are almost none left in that industry. The only hope is that their rhetoric extends to other sectors and creates a meaningful increase in employment, though that’s another debate entirely.

Since the downturn struck in 2008, much has been speculated on Ireland’s means to re-establish itself as a stable economy with the ‘green revolution’ and Ireland’s abundance of renewable energy leading the way in talk, if less so in action. With no oil and minimal reserves of gas (that we gave away anyway) Ireland missed out on the Industrial Revolution and all the prosperity that came with it. However, with the ‘green revolution’ still somewhat in its infancy, Ireland’s abundance of natural resources of wind and tidal energy positions us well to take advantage (assuming no strange paradox emerges wherein we again doom ourselves to unsustainable practice in the pursuit of these sustainable energies).

Few opportunities to engage in sustainable building approaches were taken during the building boom, with most realised ecologically considered designs limited to a small number of specialist practices. There were moments however; Frank Cooney was the project architect for the Green Building in Temple Bar as far back as 1991 at a time when interest in theories to do with global warming and climate change were largely the reserve of kids watching Captain Planet and smelly students called Swampy living in forests where roads were due to cut through.

The Green Party’s influence in government means newly built homes will now have to meet very high standards of sustainability and energy efficiency, and new regulations due out in 2011 will set high targets for energy efficient new buildings. The unfortunate reality of the boom however, is that there are already too many new houses, thus the challenge for the incoming government will be to continue the process of retrofitting Irish homes by maintaining the grant scheme for improving energy efficiency in households.

Frank Cooney is a member of the (Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland) RIAI‘s Sustainability Task Force and has recently completed such retrofitting with the radical transformation of a derelict 19th century farmhouse outside of Kingscourt in County Cavan to the industry’s ‘Passivhaus’ standard. He describes the process by which one could go about retrofitting of an existing dwelling, starting with the cheapest, simple measures through to the more expensive and more severe undertakings.

“The passive techniques will be the cheapest, whereby the envelope of a building is optimised so as not to waste energy. The primary and easiest way to go about making your home more energy efficient for less money is, simply put, to wrap it up warm,” he said. Many Irish houses are poorly insulated, particularly those in city and town centres which, because of their age, will have none at all. The obvious approach here is to dry line the house by fixing insulation to the inside wall, “ the best solution however is to actually fit the insulation externally so that the wall serves as a thermal mass, storing heat for the slow release of heat inside.”

Orientation and cold bridging are critical considerations with new builds, though difficult to fix once a building is complete. Replacing windows is an option however, moving from double to triple glazing, and for those in homes of an historical quality, modern sash windows can be built to better energy efficient standards, so compromises do not have to be made.

The last, and among the easier to achieve, of the passive techniques he mentions is to improve air-tightness. It probably seems obvious; if there’s a draft it will be cold. Taking the principle to a more advanced level by sealing all joints with “specifically designed membranes and adhesive tape will dramatically reduce air-leakage and in so doing further reduce air leakage and the associated heat loss.”

The passive techniques will deal with conserving energy, the focus for a home then will concern how that energy is produced. Heat recovery ventilation can be used to promote air circulation in a now air-tight house, solar panels could be used to heat the water (yes, even in Ireland) and wood chip burners could be used to heat the whole house. The latter will likely be the focal point around which the change comes to Irish homes, no longer the traditional open hearth for chimneys, in the conventional sense, are the chief offenders when it comes to wasting energy in homes. Among the more expensive (but efficient) options in retrofitting, is to remove the fireplace and chimney altogether, and to replace it with a much more efficient balanced flue.

These alterations will improve your home and see it achieve an improved energy rating; however, the policy, despite worthy intention, somewhat misses the point. Newly built homes in Ireland are put through a computer program called DEAP, from which its BER (Building Energy Rating) is arrived at. Frank Cooney’s house in Cavan has an A2 rating, whereas a Victorian stone-built terraced house in Dublin with no insulation is likely to achieve a lowly F or G rating. The curious thing about the DEAP assessment is that it does not take into account the embodied energy of materials, how occupants get are transported to their house or water conservation.

Under the current policy, it doesn’t matter if timber used in construction comes from unsustainable rainforests in Indonesia or an occupant has to drive ten-miles to get to and from their home every day. A Victorian house in south-county Dublin will have less embodied energy due to its proximity to Dart or Luas lines than a rural farmhouse in Cavan which requires cars for transport for example, but this is not considered in DEAP calculations either. These are quite bizarre shortcomings in what is an otherwise worthwhile policy.

The complete lack of intent in regard to water harvesting is most conspicuously odd in its absence considering our abundance of it and the impending introduction of water rates. It is our single most plentiful resource; it seems absolute folly not to take advantage of it.

Whether Ireland could ever be the world leader it aspires to be remains to be seen, but the inevitable inescapable changes are coming. On the Aran Islands a series of electric cars are currently being piloted with a vision towards making the islands completely carbon free – that will mean laying aside the open fire tradition too because burning turf in a conventional hearth is simply not sustainable and domestic turf cutting is legally due to cease in 2012 anyway.

What industry professionals term ‘cold bridging’ is the critical element to avoid in contemporary building design. This is the potential location in the building envelope where insulation does not enclose it, and allows warmth to escape through the building fabric. Chimneys are the chief offender in this regard, and that is why a cherished custom will now have to at least change. The open fire doesn’t necessarily have to go, but chimneys in the familiar sense are falling out of favour. Now, Irish families will sit around a wood burning stove with a balanced flue in highly efficient, potentially carbon-free homes – it seems a much more polished, cleaner vision than the cosy tradition that will not be lost, but rather re-imagined for another generation.