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One of the unsuccessful policies pursued during the bubble was called the National Spatial Strategy, launched in 2002 by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government.
Accompanied by an elaborate scheme to de-centralise government departments and agencies, the policy has since been abandoned and the costs of the phantom office schemes quietly written off. The accompanying map is based on one in the 2002 plan.
The strategy followed a well-worn path, with ‘gateways’ and ‘hubs’, as well as decentralised public servants, sprinkled generously around the country.
As long ago as 1968 a government study (the Buchanan report) recommended that economic development should be concentrated on a small number of cities connected via a modern road network.
The government of the day responded by spreading whatever industrial investment the IDA could muster around every single constituency and neglected road investment for a generation. No less than 160 distinct towns were identified as suitable locations for industry and generous grant aid ensured that factories were opened in most of them.
Almost all have since closed, inward investment has chosen to focus on Dublin and the major provincial cities and the Government has finally delivered the main components of a proper national road network.
Economic reality
So economic reality has delivered what the politicians resisted, namely the pattern of regional development which Buchanan recommended 50 years ago.
Ireland is a small country with few cities, short distances between them and very high levels of access to private car transport. Even though business and industry find it convenient to focus on the main urban areas, this still leaves most people within feasible commuting distance of centres of employment. Government, without saying so, appears to have silently surrendered to reality: the policy of dispersing inbound investment to every town in the country has been consigned to the dustbin of history. It would make a nice thesis topic for some graduate student to calculate how better off the country would be today had Buchanan’s industrial concentration strategy been followed, and the motorway network built, when the need was already visible in the 1970s.
Downside
There is a downside.
Many politicians in provincial Ireland perceive a policy of neglect and complain that small-town retail outlets are unable to survive. This is entirely correct: it is no longer viable to maintain a range of retail stores in towns and villages below a critical scale, and most Irish counties have towns and villages which are struggling.
But this is not a new problem, and it is not a consequence of government policy. It is a consequence of widespread car ownership and, more recently, of online shopping.
The pattern of town and village settlement in Ireland, as in most of western Europe, dates back to an age when decentralised retail distribution was dictated by the technology of transportation.
If people get around on horseback, there needs to be a market town every 10 or 15 miles. Up to the 1950s, most small towns in Ireland had a full range of butchers, bakers, pubs, chemists and hardware stores. But private car ownership was the preserve of the wealthy.
Rural Ireland now has car ownership levels typical of economically well-off countries and car ownership is highest in rural areas. The graph shows the numbers for Dublin city, the city council area, about 528,000 population, and Tipperary, the biggest inland county, about 160,000.
Dublin city is the area with the lowest car ownership in Ireland and Tipperary one of the highest. The picture is not surprising: income disparities in Ireland are not large and Dublin residents regard car ownership as to some degree optional: work and shops are not too far away and there is decent bus transport.
Both Dublin city and Tipperary residents can afford cars but Tipperary residents need them. There is an inescapable policy consequence: most people in rural Ireland are not just willing but are also able to commute, within reason, to work and to shop. Buchanan’s time has come.
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