Kevin Myers /Celbridge developement

The following from K. M.'s ,I.I. 16/4/08 :
"A fate is being proposed for the pleasant little town of Celbridge which is so monstrous , so implausable ,so fatuous . that it could almost come from one of Swift's ghastly ,satirical fictions about human conduct .But this is not satire nor is it fiction ,though Swift would recognise it as a towering example of utter Brobdingnagian (? sic ) folly.

Celbridge lies along just one side of the Liffey , and its spine , paoallel to the river , is a predominantly Georgian main street :and appropriatley so .
Jonathan Swift would often journey to Celbridge , to calm the passionate yearnings of his inamorata , Vanessa , at one end of the main street. At the same time at the far end of the same street , Speaker Conolly was erecting what is now the greatest surviving Palladian mansion in Ireland , Castletown : and roughly midway between Vanessa's home and the entrance to Speaker Conolly's great house , Arthur Guinness was later to start his first brewery .
Now there are very few exports that are known around the world . The tale of Gulliver's Travels is one , and the name Lilliput exists in just about all languages . In this creation Swift invented the literary form of the traveller arriving in a country which is so similar yet utterly different . Celbridge was never Swift's home , but , as a regular visitor , it was where he first heard Irish spoken . Indeed , the concept of Lilliput might well have had its spiritual genesis in this modest Liffeyside town , where the contrasting worlds of Hiberno-English and Gaelic cultures met .
It was certainlt the home if one other great international Irish brand . Arthur Guinness , Celbridge- born and bred , opened his first brewery in the town while still in his 20's .
As we all know , in time he moved his business to Dublin , and thence to the world . Not only did he start Irelands greatest company , but he also begat , perhaos Ireland's most distinguished family , who down the generations have contributed more to this country than any other .
Arthur and Jonathan could return to Celbridges main street today , and recognise it still ;they could walk up the drivway at its eastern end , where Jonathan might admire the finisjhed Palladian splendours of Castletown , which he saw building during his visits to Vanessa .
But if Kildare County Council , and a company called 'Devondale' (where do Irish developers get these absutd cod-English names from ?) have their way , our two visitors from the 18th century will be able to see the house and the gardens ans the entire town , on the north side of the Liffey dwarfed and violated by a vast new extension to Celbridge , fronting on to the southern riverbank beyond .
The school of architecture which seems to have inspired the proposed Celbridge New Town is the M50 Orbital:a jumble of characterless , bland , concrete blocks , only suitable for lining a motorway .Some of these blocks are eight storeys , made taller still by the greater height of the far bank .

This hilariously named 'town centre 'is said by the planners to be an 'organic' development :but the 'o' word is another meaningless piety of our times. New Celbridge is as organic as DDT : in other words mere modernistic cant and developmental humbug .
Its one thing to build factories and shops near Celbridge : quite another to create ludicrous juxtapositions , a narrow river's -width apart. On the Liffey's left bank , Lilliput , on the right , Brobdingnag . On one side , naturally brewed Guinness on the other Milwaukee industrialised lite . Here stands Sir Edward Lovett Pearce's great mansion , with its majestic francini ceilings of Castletown : and there overlooking it , lies a hideous chunk of the LA beltway .
Of all the travesties perpatrated ion the name o9f progress , this surely must be the grimmest :for Castletown House was the first test of independent Ireland to recognise , restore and cherish its pre-independence , unionist legacy . And the man who was the pioneer of this was Desmond Guinness , decendant of Arthur . So the new,post -independence tolerant Ireland was born in Celbridge , and its great declaration of intent was the Palladian mansion which Desmond rescued from ruin 40 years ago .
Well if Kildare County Council and Devondale have their way , visitors to Castletown will soon be able to drive down a tidy little Georgian street , overlooked by huge office blocks . Then they will enter the splendid traffic jam outside castletown , caused by the new bridge which is to connect the new and the oldtowns .
Yet this horror will not have been done in the immediate post -independence Ireland , when ignorance and naivety allopwed many terrible things to be done , but by our new , enlightened Ireland , which in Celbridge once recognised the glorious legacies from the past and now knowingly chooses to over power them with brutal modernism.
Yet , I must be missing something . For tragically , incredibly , Kildare County Council ,has already zoned the 98-acre site for commercial development .
Furthermore , the creation of a Burbank -like Retail Mall and Industrial Park at Celbridge also has the surrort of all sitting TDs in Kildare and most of the county's councillors . That notwithstanding , if you share my horror at the perfectly monstrous proposals for the town , you have until April 21 , at the very latest , to lodge your objections. "