@Leo
One selfish individual can absolutely trample on their neighbour's rights & entitlements, because unless you have pockets deep enough to go to court nobody is going to do anything for you. Anyone who has ever had a bad neighbour knows that very well, and good for you if you've only had great ones. Vindicating your rights through the courts is a long and expensive process, and usually not worth it. Fortunately most people in most areas are decent enough at least to the extent where they don't make the place crap for their neighbours.
Houses & apartments don't produce sewage. The people living in them do. Houses & apartments don't drive cars. The people living in them do. So on and so forth, etc etc etc.
It's obvious that provision of all kinds of services has been neglected for decades. At best government (national & local) plan to satisfy the needs of the population as it is now in 5 or 10 years time. And of course in 10 years time the population is higher so there's still a shortfall. Arguably the only thing Ireland has had more of than it required at any point in time during my almost-half-century of life has been housing, and that for only 5-10 years around 2010.
In my opinion, infrastructure & services should be available to deliver the expected required services plus at least 10%. That's basically eliminate problems getting a place in a school or creche, a GP, hospital waiting lists, etc etc. What actually happens is they plan for 90% and try and stretch it.
- EDIT- it's obviously important to note that it will never ever be possible to provide all desired services to all people. I would say food, housing (including heating), healthcare, education & childcare, and policing & justice, are all required while probably everything else is desired. Every desired service should be prioritised according to how it contributes to a required service— there'd probably be some surprising results, for example there's plenty of evidence that increasing tree cover increases health & wellbeing while reducing crime. So working to make Donnycarney as leafy as Donnybrook reduces spending on healthcare and policing & justice....
GPs need homes too. As do the engineers & construction workers to build water & the sewage systems, and roads etc etc. Teachers need places to live as well. Etc etc. When the classic young middle class couple of a teacher and a guard can't move out of their childhood bedrooms because there's nothing there to buy or rent, you've got a serious problem. And anything which alleviates that problem is very welcome.
1 in10 houses getting a log cabin and two additional residents is not going to collapse society as we know it.
Actually, 1 in10 would be around 200,000 studio apartments in short order which would be absolutely amazing. I'd say we'd be lucky to get 1 in 100. Aside from anything else, most people with the physical space, the money, and inclination to put these in their back gardens probably already has them and they're just hoping the council doesn't come knocking for a while.