Young couples buying new homes in urban areas are paying an extra €30,000 towards the provision of social housing while those building homes in rural areas contribute nothing, according to new research.
The research, by planning consultant Dr Diarmuid Ó Gráda, found that the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) was producing 96 per cent of the "social and affordable" housing required under Part V of the 2000 Planning Act.
He attributed a third of the price differential between new houses in Dublin (average €300,000) and new houses outside the GDA (average €210,000) to the burden of financing housing under Part V.
Dr Ó Gráda, who will be presenting his research at the Irish Planning Institute's annual conference in Mullingar today, maintains that tilting the balance in favour of more rural one-off houses would make things worse.
Providing access to rural house plots also placed a burden on country roads, on which €1.5 billion had been spent since 2000. If half of this year's allocation of €500 million served new houses, the average cost would be €8,500.
Replacing the N22 between Killarney and Farranfore, Co Kerry, with an entirely new route because the existing road has too many entrances on it would cost taxpayers €90 million - an average of €440,000 each for the 150 houses.
Though random rural households had to pay higher electricity charges, Dr Ó Gráda said everyone paid the same price for the postal service even though it cost four times as much to deliver a letter to houses in rural areas.
With over 95 per cent of pupils using the school transport scheme living outside the Dublin area, the annual cost to the State of over €100 million represented an annual subsidy of €2,000 to a rural family with three children.
He also cited a study by engineers from Trinity College Dublin which examined 74 widely spread and randomly chosen sites in Leinster, and concluded that only 5 per cent had ground conditions suitable for septic tanks.
"It is easy to see the implications of this study for the wider countryside. If 95 per cent of Leinster sites need intervention, what might be expected from poorer conditions west of the Shannon?
"We cannot say exactly how many septic tanks there are in the Republic." Estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000. They daily discharge 250 million litres of effluent into the countryside.
He said there was little evidence that septic tanks were being maintained, and his own survey of suppliers of proprietary sewage treatment systems showed that only a small minority of householders had long-term service contracts.
"Once the system is in place, official Ireland walks away," said Dr Ó Gráda.
Noting that Ireland has the highest rate of microbial groundwater pollution in the EU, with "clear implications for...public health", he said there was a need to introduce an equivalent of the annual car test for septic tanks.
