A suggestion by Meath Aontú TD Peadar Tóibin that “rural Ireland is on knees’ drew a swift rebuke from two senior Fine Gael figures, Minister Heather Humphreys and Deputy Michael Ring, during a heated Dáil debate in recent days.
Deputy Tóibin made the point that rural communities, predominantly concentrated in the west and midlands of Ireland, are suffering from significant population decline.
He said that it is calculated that over the past four decades up to 800 electoral areas have lost population or significantly lost population.
This, he pointed out , has been the result of a lopsided spatial policy which has put hundreds of thousands of young people into the Dublin area, in particular.
He also quoted figures from the Central Statistics Office, which revealed an increasing income inequality between the western regions, the north-western regions and the rest of the State.
Unsurprisingly, his remarks angered both Minister Humphreys and Deputy Ring, both of whom have been investing a great deal of time and energy in seeking to re-energise rural Ireland over the past decade by allocating large sums of money in the direction of rural communities.
While Michael Ring was Minister for Rural Development during the last term of the government, the level of funding he directed to parishes, clubs and organisations was unprecedented.
He also secured investment for the new Turlough to Westport roadway, which is estimated to have cost over €300 million and will have a very positive impact on the future development of Mayo over the coming decades as well as copper-fastening well-paid jobs in the county’s multinational industries.
But while many towns and villages are doing very well as a result of such investment, there are many others where the local school, post office and shop have closed as a result of the aforementioned spatial strategy by government agencies to direct more and more people to live in urban rather than rural areas.
As long as this strategy is permitted to prevail, the more rural communities will suffer and it is too late for many of them to fight back.
So while Mayo is identified as ‘rural Ireland’, it cannot be said that its leading towns like Castlebar, Ballina, Westport and Claremorris are on their knees, as Deputy Tóibín put it, but there are several locations outside of those that are.
In many cases, no amount of investment will turn back the clock, such has been the change in living habits and the move away from traditional habits.
On that basis, Deputy Tóibin is neither completely right nor completely wrong in what he saying – and the same applies to Minister Humphreys and Deputy Ring.
What must happen now, however, is that the spatial strategy is altered to turn investment away from Dublin, in particular, in order to bring the rest of the country, most notably the west, north west and midlands, up to the levels of other areas.
The new industrial investment in Athenry should be a signal of what needs to happen under the terms of the new two, three and four governments.