So Michael O'Leary, the Ryanair boss, is dreaming of doubling the number of passengers carried to Malta to eight million a year by 2030.

That's the stuff which keeps many of us awake at night. Eight million a year.

With half that number already we have jammed roads, an infrastructure that collapses under the pressure - a hospital that just cannot work, an electricity supply and a water supply system clearly designed for a different population.

To say nothing of the jammed roads, the impossibility of finding parking spaces almost everywhere.

To say nothing of frayed nerves as we fight over any extra space on the roads.

In two years our population has increased by 40,000. That is clearly unsustainable.

Thanks to you Mr O'Leary we have seen the future and we don't want it for ourselves and for our children.

Once again we will have to ransom our small island from rapacious hands, cost what it may.

We did it in the far distant thirteenth century when our fathers ransomed the island from Don Garcia Monroy. And we will do it again. We must do.

We are realising on a daily basis that already huge sections of our economy are sold out to the O'Leary template.

We see construction going on everywhere around us. In most cases this is not for us, nor for our children nor for our family. But for the eight million Mr O'Leary will be bringing. Plus the countless thousands that will be brought in by the new unnamed airlines that we are being promised will be coming here spurred by Mr O'Leary's example.

Even before they materialize, when they're only a gleam in their creators' eyes or their planners' plans we know they will ultimately have huge impacts.

To be fair with Mr O'Leary and his likes, we have seen corners of Malta being changed where we thought it was impossible to do it. But they went on and did it.

I remember the huge battles surrounding the new Hilton, the controversies when the planners wanted to do better than God and create a bay where there was none.

So many years later, after people lay down in front of bulldozers and you go there and marvel at the result.

Then others were encouraged by the Hilton example and soon that corner of Malta became full of cranes and cement blocks. And now it's full of new, gleaming hotels.

And it's still going on. We have had the Tigne Point development and the Mercury development and some years from now we will have the massive DB one and then the equally massive Villa Rosa one and then.... And then...

I remember when that corner where the Hamrun By-Pass joins the Rabat road was just a narrow country lane leading to Qormi.

Today there are the Quad towers. They remind me of the high-rises one encounters when one is landing at Frankfurt airport.

But that's Germany, I hear you say. That's exactly the point. We dream big but we're small.

The last one to remind us we're small was Alfred Sant who said we must not dream of joining Europe. And we dared and we joined.

Mr O'Leary says the eight million figure can be managed if there is planning. As we queue on our way to work mouthing imprecations at Mr O'Leary we cannot see how this can be done.

Certainly we're not alone in this quest. We carry with us hundreds if not thousands of Indian carers, Filipino nurses, Bangladeshi food distributers and so many others who are building their lives through working here.

It's a tight squeeze for us all and there are climaxes of exasperation ahead. But we've never known the Maltese to run away.

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