“It’s no surprise that this happened. The cliff looks unstable. I never understood why the authorities allowed a block of apartments to be built right on top of it.”

This is what this newspaper reported one of the residents in the Tal-Veċċja area in St Paul’s Bay as saying (September 13) after the cave-in of the part on top of what is known as L-għar (the cave) at the bottom of Stella Maris Street.

Years ago, when that block of flats was just about starting to be built, I had sent a long complaint to the Ombudsman about the whole project. After long and in-depth consideration at the Ombudsman’s office, the reply that came was in the sense that my complaint was fully justified but that, given the fact that the whole project had started to be built, there was no remedy.

This was also at a time when a well-known architect from St Paul’s Bay had also openly declared that the whole of that side of themain St Paul’s Bay road was in fact built on unstable land.

A look at the picture carried on the front page of this newspaper should be enough to tell all and sundry about the level of guaranteed future solidity of the block of flats built above what for us who have swum in the area for many long years is an iconic natural cave. But man has persisted with braving against what has seemed so obvious for a very long time and I can only sincerely wish the owners/occupants of the residences there more long years of enjoyment of their properties. But, in the long term (apart from us all being dead), this and other challenges like this against nature continue to be what I might describe as clear daredevil investment.