Those TDs and councillors lobbying intensively for changes to the soon-to-be launched National Planning Framework would be well advised to carefully read the latest report from the Economic and Social Research Institute.
No doubt those politicians believe that they are protecting their constituencies’ interests by arguing against the framework’s intense focus on building up a small number of regional cities.
But the ESRI research, revealed on the front page of this newspaper yesterday, makes clear that building up the regional cities of Cork, Limerick and Galway to help drive and rebalance the country’s economic activity is the only way forward.
The think tank said that Dublin will become increasingly congested with longer commutes, and that housing pressures will rise if growth is not redirected towards regional cities. It further argued that developing a smaller number of regional hubs, which could benefit from having sufficient scale to provide services and amenities such as public transport, would benefit both the regions and the wider economy. Crucially, it added that investing to the same degree in the development of smaller rural centres would be wasteful, as they would be unable to grow to such a scale.
It is essential that this expert advice is not ignored for political purposes. Planning has never been Ireland’s strong point. Half a century ago the same arguments were made in the Buchanan Report but were ignored as politics won out over sound economics. Successive governments, up to and including the disastrous 2002 Spatial Strategy, went for a “one for everyone in the audience” approach to investment and regional development.
Advertisement
It is now obvious that this approach failed spectacularly. It did nothing to stem the huge overdependence on Dublin and was a significant factor in the regional cities, as the ESRI report Prospects for Irish Regions and Counties notes, lacking scale compared with equivalents in other similarly sized European countries.
With the population projected to grow by roughly one million over the next 13 years it is vital that mistakes of the past are not repeated by watering down the planning framework, as some are arguing and which happened with the 2002 plan.
It is important to emphasise that the framework is not about artificially constraining Dublin. It is true that the global economy is moving to city states with a critical mass. Dublin could become an important financial services hub for the European Union. If that were to happen, it would be a huge boon for the rest of the country. Contrary to what some are arguing, there is no reason that Dublin cannot grow further once that growth is well planned. And that must mean higher density, including city centre apartment developments, as opposed to the low-density sprawl experienced over the past 50 years. A well-planned approach would allow for more cost-effective provision of services, such as public transport.
But all the growth cannot be focused on the capital, as this would further imbalance the economy. It makes sense for Cork, Galway and Limerick to grow proportionately to Dublin so that they can develop as urban centres of real scale and become engines of growth for the wider regions that surround them.
It’s difficult to overstate what is at stake. The National Planning Framework and the €100 billion ten-year capital plan, to be launched in tandem with it, are arguably the two most important policy documents this government will produce.
Advertisement
It is no exaggeration to say they will shape the country for decades to come and impact directly on how we live our lives, travel to work and access services. There can be no repeat of the political cowardice of the past. It is now or never to do the right thing.