The Irish Times

Dublin has to expand: either the capital condenses or it keeps swallowing up fields, valleys, villages and more of the best agricultural land. The pace of change in Dublin is so spectacular that nobody has a handle on it - not Dublin Corporation, not the banks or property developers, not even the Government. To an English visitor, Dublin is repeating, on a larger scale relative to its smaller size, the experience of London during the Thatcher years, when the promised deregulation of the financial services sector triggered a massive building boom.