Publication last week of the island’s annual population bulletin has highlighted a couple of uncomfortable truths that are potentially very serious for this community.

The first is that Guernsey cannot control how many people live here, despite the States having decided in 2007 to keep that number stable.

Over the last five years there has been a general upward trend in the number of housing licences issued, although restricting them is the principal way of enforcing the Assembly’s desire to cap the number of residents.

When deputies decided to stop growth, the population was 61,029. It is now 1,402 higher, with the Housing Department having ramped up the number of licences issued on each of the three successive years.

The other point to make is that the number of residents should actually be higher. The trend is for it to increase by around 270 a year so the 157 recorded by the latest bulletin is statistically low. The reality, of course, is that recession has more effect on numbers living here than the housing laws.

In turn, this demonstrates that if the island wants to take control of these things, the existing measures have to be replaced with something that bites on everyone, as the Population Policy Group’s consultation document sets out with clarity.

For most, however, the headline figure in the population bulletin is the estimate that we will have 70,000 here by 2035. What wasn’t stated is that in 2007’s Sustainable Guernsey report by the States, the then estimate was 69,937 by 2043, so the pace of increase stepped up immediately after the States voted to cap it.

Either way, 70,000 permanent residents is 7,500 more than we have now – broadly equivalent to another St Martin’s parish and requiring some 3,000 households to accommodate them.

While that is alarming enough, it is also clear from the report that the island probably cannot afford not to increase the population if it is to have enough people of working age to pay the taxes that underpin the community’s public services.

The demographic timebomb is no longer theoretical – it is becoming reality.