If Ireland were a building then there would be a condemned sign nailed to the door. The country is so lopsided it is liable to topple into the Irish Sea from the disproportionate number of people living on one side of it.

More than half the State’s population is concentrated in Leinster, where the capital city is straining at the seams. It will take more than the powerwash prescribed, undiplomatically, by the US ambassador to Ireland to fix it. More urgently needed is somewhere else to share the load. Yet the Dublin-centric ethos of “build them and they’ll come” continues at a gallop.

Once upon a time, infill sites were gaps in back streets and side gardens. Now any square centimetre of earth between Dublin’s edges and its ever-widening hinterland of commuter towns in neighbouring counties is being gobbled up for development. With the population of the eastern and midlands region set to grow by at least another half-a-million people by 2040, it will soon be hard to tell where Dublin ends and Bray, Naas, Drogheda and Navan begin.

Project Ireland 2040 said as much when the €116 billion National Development Plan was launched eight years ago. About the same time, developer Seán Mulryan began hatching his own €5 billion plan to turn Athlone into Ireland’s sixth and most environmentally friendly city. Last June, he unveiled what he called a “credible blueprint for addressing Ireland’s demographic and environmental challenges”.

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