The planners decided that, for a residential building within a quarter-mile of the city centre, six storeys were just one too many and that to reduce the carbon footprint of the building it needed not the space for residents to live in, but a completely useless, purely decorative rooftop garden.

There were no local objections to the development. There is no demand for rooftop gardens that largely go unused by the residents of apartment blocks elsewhere in the city, yet are costly to maintain. Nonetheless, Dublin's social engineers simply put their wisdom ahead of the need of the city and reduced the size of the development, passing the cost of their decision on to future tenants.

A few days later, their colleagues at An Bord Pleanala overrode their own planning inspectors to give the green light to a mammoth Lansdowne Road stadium project. Effectively, the residents who opposed the proposed design of the stadium won their case in the open and procedurally correct way. They argued their case at public hearings and managed to convince the An Bord Pleanala inspector in charge of the case that the Lansdowne project should not proceed as proposed.

All of this turned out to be a charade. An Bord Pleanala simply overruled its own inspector and the objectors. Strangely, reporting on this case, the Irish Times failed to notice any "controversy" behind such "agrant violation of the democratic review process.

Here is the problem with Dublin's planners. A 19-metre-high six-storey building is a controversial project requiring serious downsizing by the authorities, even if no one objects to it. A 50metre salad bowl towering over a residential area is a necessary piece of infrastructure that warrants subjugation of the democratic process.

Is it any wonder that Dublin real estate prices have reached stratospheric heights?