Deadline for Clough Jordan Eco Village, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2004

        In De Valera’s ideal Ireland, comely maidens danced at the cross-roads, while their boyfriends played Gaelic football.  Their mothers sat at home, knitting  by the fire and their fathers hummed a tune, as they tilled the soil.  An idyllic Ireland, and one that many young men shed blood for.  Dev is dead.  Lucky for him, because the way it turned out might have killed him.  A comely maiden mad enough to hang around the cross-roads would be mowed down by the traffic.  Young lads race each other in their cars and not in the fields and their fathers commute to work in Dublin.  Their mothers worry about their weight and drive obese kids to the shopping mall for fast food and cheap, imported clothes. 
        The cost of buying a simple family home goes on rising, so the only place most of us can afford is in among rows of identical houses, miles from anywhere, with no shops, no cafes, and definitely no village green.  Inhabitants can drive to a shop, if they need a pint of milk and children can play indoors, if they don’t want to get knocked down.
        This is obviously not the green and pleasant Ireland Dev envisaged. One solution that is being put forward is ‘The Village’, in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary.  The brainchild of a company called Sustainable Projects Ireland, the idea is that you purchase a site and build a home within a carefully planned community, with a commitment to sustainability and to preserving the natural environment.  According to the company this village will serve as a model for sustainable living in the 21st century.
        Cloughjordan has a history of this kind of innovation.  The first private electricity supply was generated here,  and the first public bus service was started here.  There was a even a Cloughjordan currency.  But the idea of adding an entire village onto the existing village is a revolutionary concept. 
        What is intended, subject to planning permission being granted, is that the company will build a new street, creating a crossroads.  This street will lead to a market square and to 110 homes, community buildings and businesses, of different sizes, ranging from apartment blocks to detached houses.  The streets have been designed to prioritise pedestrians and to minimise traffic, with cycle paths and walkways.  There will be fifty acres of land allocated for community use, divided between an organic farm and a wildlife park.
        All of the buildings in the village will fit a so-called ‘Eco Charter’, with criteria that includes using environmentally friendly building materials, and following the latest EU directives concerning energy efficiency and insulation.  There will be a central heating system, supplied by a boiler which burns fuel grown on the land, and waste water will be treated in a reed-bed system.  Street lighting will be designed to minimise light pollution and organic produce grown on the farm will be sold in the market square.  Residents will sustain themselves by creating businesses in the village, and these could, it is hoped, include eco-tourism and educational courses so that other people can come and see how the village operates.
        It is a plan which has been four years in gestation.  This month sees the planning application finally going ahead.  Anyone who is interested in buying a plot of land within the village is being invited now to invest six thousand euros in the company and to take a gamble on planning being granted.  If planning is granted, you will buy a site and build a home, and the price of your site will be discounted to reward you for investing early.  If planning is not granted, you lose the initial payment. 
        According to Gavin Harte, the manager of Sustainable Projects, it is a risk that must be taken. I wondered what happens to the money if planning isn’t granted.
        ‘If planning isn’t granted, after the team of architects, engineers and consultants are paid, after the fee for the planning application is paid and after running costs of the company, there won’t be any change,’ he said.  ‘So of course it is a risk.  But we are very confident that planning will be granted, as all the signals from the council are positive and the land has already been earmarked for sustainable development.’
        Eco-warriors, eco-activists, there is a perception, of course, of these people living in teepees, trailing mangy dogs and smoking dope.  Sensible business people don’t do that kind of thing.  But for an undertaking of this scale to get off the drawing-boards, it has been necessary to find a sensible bunch of people to get behind it.  Among the directors of the company are a librarian, a criminologist,  a pharmacist and an IT manager. I joined a group which included a couple of architects, a biochemist, a nurse, and a teacher, last weekend.  In between showers of hailstones, we were guided around the site, and in the evening we went to meet the locals.
        Local reactions to the proposal have been mixed, but all of the people I spoke to in the pub had good things to say about the ‘villagers’.  Some of those who I contacted afterwards were sceptical about integration between themselves and the new community, but none of them were fearful.  ‘We don’t think they are hippies or anything like that,’ was one comment.  ‘And any sort of progress is good for the village.’
        If it works, the Eco Village will represent a possible solution to the alarming problems we face, as a country that is rapidly losing touch with the natural environment and with any sense of community.  And there may yet be comely maidens dancing at the crossroads in rural Ireland.
www.thevillage.ie for more info.