Of course everybody has choices. People could choose to leave Ireland completely and pursue their career in countries that do provide a means of getting around, be it by public transport as in New York or London, or by facilitating motorists as in Florida.
But just because people have the option to radically change their life style, doesn't get the countries like Ireland off the hook of providing facilities.
It's very worrying to hear people on this thread advising others to change job, or move house so that they can use public transport. What the hell kind of country do you want to create?
What you are in fact proposing is a country in which the options of the citizen are radically REDUCED. Why shouldn't a person in a free country expect to be able to live in the countryside and work in the city? Why is it so difficult to create that option for people?
It's the perfect work/life balance as far as I can see. Having grown up in the countryside and later lived in cities I know damn well where I'd prefer to raise kids. But to listen to the Public transport advocates, I shouldn't be allowed to choose that way of life. Or if I do choose It I must put up with nagging from the perenially naive that I'm wrong to choose to take my car to work because I'm destroying the environment.
Get over it. If you want to stop cars in your cities then build some park and rides on the outskirts so that people who live outside the city have somewhere to park and provide city transport that will get them in a reasonable time and with minimum hassle to their place of work/shopping/whatever.
For many currently looking for a house the option to buy in the cities DOES NOT EXIST. I'm sure many who live 50-100 miles from work and spend up to 4 hours a day commuting would much rather live closer to or even in cities. But the option does not exist. It like many other options has been elimintated by the way your cities have been developed, and by the way your government interacts with property developers and investors.
The last thing these people need on top of the hassle of spending hours everyday driving, is to listen to people telling them that on top of everything else they are destroying the planet.
Even those who might have the option of "over time" moving their home closer to work must put up with the fact that they would have to flush thousands of Euro in Stamp Duty on their existing house down the toilet, and flush even more on the purchase of their new house.
If you want a country in which people can move around then aim your guns at the idiotic policies that make moving harder, rather than at people barely making ends meet, despite earning a reasonable salary.
And please, for the love of god, if you are one of those people fortunate enough to have bought a house in Dublin a couple of years ago, with public transport options on your doorstep, and a nice chunk of equity in your property, then please remove yourself from this debate entirely. You have no concept of the OPTIONS that people actually have today.
When you start telling governments that instead of providing services they can instead curtail your rights then you are on a slippery slope. It reminds me of Fianna Fail's attempts to curtail the rights of people with disabilities to sue the government when the government failed to provide services that they were entitled to.
When otherwise intelligent rational people begin to accept that kind of thinking then you really have to worry about the future of the country. Perhaps in the end, you do get the government you deserve. Am I in the minority for thinking we deserve more than this?
-Rd