We have been informed, earlier this week, that Ryanair wants to carry eight million tourists a year to Malta on its routes, within ten years. These can be handled, we were advised by Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary. He told us that all we need to do is spread them a little over the year, and improve our infrastructure.

The tourism minister and the Malta Tourism Authority, so far, did not react to this. Nor have they to date informed us as to the quantum of subsidies Ryanair receives for its operations. Subsidies paid from the public purse to Ryanair, so far is a closely guarded state secret!

It is not good news that this year will be another tourism record year.

Just have a look around and you will see the impacts.

It is not just about the tourism-driven development but also the intensive pressure to change the rules to satisfy an ever-increasing greed of the tourism industry. This is what is currently in the pipeline relative to the Villa Rosa site at St Julian's.

Two years ago, MHRA published its report entitled Carrying Capacity Study for Tourism in The Maltese Islands. This report had already identified that over a five-year period the projected supply of touristic accommodation would be close to five million tourists per annum. Such an influx cannot be handled. This is pretty obvious to one and all. Instead of addressing the developing glut government seeks to make it worse.

Around eight years back, the tourism development lobby was all out for a Paceville master plan. It was then clear to all that the proposed master plan was "just" collating together the requirements of the tourism industry in the area, and to hell with the rest. Readers remember that even the developers lobby was then against the draft Paceville master plan as the proposal was focussed on nine specific projects. In these columns I had then queried: Paceville master plan: greed or need? (TMIS: 9 October 2016)

The underlying philosophy of the draft Paceville master plan was the Dubaification of the area. As a result of public opinion buttressed by the environmental lobby the draft Paceville master plan, then, was scrapped. However, its objectives linger on, quietly waiting for the right moment. It would be reasonable to expect that these same objectives will be resurrected in the proposed amendments to the area's local plan which Cabinet has instructed the Planning Authority to prepare.

The objective will be to ensure that the Villa Rosa project would be reinforced by purposefully designed policies able to withstand the onslaught of the environmental lobby. Just as the Paceville Master Plan had intended.

The Villa Rosa project, so far, involves a massive footprint (around 50,000 square metres) with a proposed development mix of tourism, leisure and business uses in an area which is already saturated and as a result overcrowded at practically all times of the year.

It is pertinent to remember that the EIA for the Villa Rosa project was published around twenty months ago. It contains a number of studies relative to a multitude of aspects. One of these studies is an economic analysis by E-Cubed Consultants, led by current Bank of Valletta Chairman Gordon Cordina. As expected, this study gives a glowing economic endorsement of the project. We have become used to such studies which seem to be able to justify anything. In arriving at its conclusions, this study, completely ignores the impacts which the Villa Rosa project will have on the public infrastructure and on the fact that this will have to be made good for by the public coffers. The impacts are substantial when the project is viewed on its own but they assume enormous proportions when viewed cumulatively with the impacts generated by other major projects already in hand or in the pipeline for the area.

This is the chaos being planned. It is the tourism model for the very near future.

It is what we have to face. The environmental lobby can however successfully resist all this in the same way as the draft Paceville master plan was successfully resisted eight years ago.

Otherwise, this, unfortunately, is the future: chaos driven by the tourism industry. Our residential communities know quite well what it means. They have a first-hand experience.

An architect and civil engineer, the author is a former Chairperson of ADPD-The Green Party in Malta.  [email protected] ,   http://carmelcacopardo.wordpress.com