OPINION: The centre cannot hold

I HAVE a confession to make. For most of my professional life I gave little thought to how national economic performance played out over the Irish regions. When ESRI colleagues and I studied long-term impacts of EU Structural Funds, we used a model of the national economy and examined how that economy was likely to benefit from massive infrastructural investment programmes funded by EU transfers to lagging members, such as Ireland.
My attitudes to and perceptions of regional development only changed when I left the ESRI and started spending more time working from my late father’s cottage in Murrisk. That is when I fell under the influence of Fr Micheál Mac Gréil, the West-on-Track team, promoters of the Atlantic Economic Corridor (AEC), and many others concerned about regional development. In the west, I was exposed to persuasive and compelling arguments that had never been aired during my time in the ESRI.
When the thoughts of people living along the Atlantic coast turn to economic matters, the dominant view is that the region is deprived of effective policy focus to dynamise local economies, help realise their hidden potential and re-build population after 170 years of population implosion. The culprit is generally believed to be centralisation of power in a Dublin-based government preoccupied primarily with an extended neo-Pale.
This was highlighted in a recent Irish Times article by Frank McDonald, where he pointed out that four of the so-called ‘five cities’ in Project Ireland 2040 (Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford) are growing more slowly that the Dublin-centred neo-Pale due to lack of effective public policy attention and funding.

Stark plight
HE asserts that Project Ireland 2040 is a ‘one city’ model of irish development, not a ‘five cities’ model, which makes the plight of the (effectively) ‘no-city’ northern and western region even starker. When it comes to strategic planning, the other four cities get the leftovers from the rich man’s table; the rest of the country gets the crumbs.
How did this situation come about? The main policy-related driving force is the belief, widely shared in government circles, that Ireland must have an urban metropolis with a population of 1.5 million or larger in order to compete internationally in high tech manufacturing and services and reap economy of scale benefits (ie, the bigger the city, the more productive the work force).
But as Frank McDonald shows, there are massive downsides to Dublin’s sprawling and badly planned expansion into a neo-Pale. Far from creating a compact, densely populated city with housing and efficient public transport (like most European cities of any size), our state ‘planners’ have created a commuting and housing nightmare in a commuter belt that now encompasses almost the entire Eastern and Midlands region.
There is a curious historical parallel between the need for the British to stay within the Pale, safe from uncooperative and rebellious native Irish, and our own government hunkering down in a neo-Pale, safe from the need to address development challenges of the outer regions occupied by the restive native Irish!
Frank McDonald focused on the lagging ‘four cities’ created by excessive focus on Dublin. But he doesn’t know the half of it! Not only do the eight counties of the ‘lagging’ Northern and Western region contain dynamic and entrepreneurial firms in manufacturing and services, but even a peripheral county like Mayo supports some large and highly productive multi-national firms. Baxter in Castlebar employs some 1,200 people and its world class production facilities make use of advanced robotic machinery designed and installed by a firm based in Sligo. Allergan, now know as Abbvie, employs some 2,000 people in Ireland, the majority in Westport. Both firms draw their labour force from a wide area but commuting – although necessary – is less onerous than trying to move about at rush hour within the neo-Pale. Just imagine how more effective this would be if the Atlantic Rail Corridor were restored and the national roads modestly improved, linking the N&W region on its north-south axis?

No in-depth examination
AFTER a lifetime studying national planning reports and strategies, I found a shocking lack of any in-depth examination of potential benefits of redirecting resources away from Dublin, initially to the four ‘lagging’ provincial cities and their larger satellite towns, and how this could kick start wider focus on the peripheral N&W region. Such a rebalancing would produce a more equitable and robust platform for growth in an era when climate change policies will need to correct the misdirected focus on a single very inefficient and socially problematic city region.
Four times every year since the 1960s the ESRI publishes an authoritative review of the Irish economy and forecasts one year ahead (Quarterly Economic Commentary). However, nowhere is there any examination of how the regional economies perform.
The ESRI may believe that theirs is a national review and not intended as a regional one. An exclusively national focus might be justified if analysis of regional performance added nothing to understanding national performance, which is claimed to trickle down automatically to the regions. And in any case, other organisations will handle regional issues.
Alas, other organisations do not handle regional issues. Trickle down is a myth. Under current policies an ever increasing part of the national economy is located within the neo-Pale, regional analysis slides further down the list of official priorities and vanishes.
The only way this will change is if existing regional universities and newly created ones like the Atlantic Technological University here in the N&W region make efforts to act as focal points for regional economic analysis and forecasting. Because the Dublin-based institutions and universities are not going to do it for us.


John Bradley was a professor at the ESRI and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.