Dublin is struggling to cope so help rest of country take off
ONE thing you won’t hear in the big debate about building a third terminal at Dublin airport is anybody asking why Cork, Shannon and Knock couldn’t get a few more auld flights instead.
It’s a measure of how madly unbalanced this country is – and how much money, development and attention is sucked into the Greater Dublin Area (sorry, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow!) that our other airports are not even getting a look in.
And this bonkers fixation on putting everything within a stone’s throw of the Liffey is just as bad for the Dubs as for everybody outside of the capital.
Dublin looks and feels like a city that’s under too much pressure, like a Christmas turkey with too much stuffing. Transport, housing, services, the natives, it’s like everybody and every system is struggling to cope.
But when you get out to the rest of the country, there’s whole swathes of the West, the midlands and the border counties that are crying out for more life, more investment, more people.
Forget this Ireland is Full garbage
– Ireland is actually fecking
empty. We’re the only developed nation in the world that has a population far lower now than it was 150 years ago (thank the famine, emigration and basically the British for that).
Here’s a mad Stat for ya from the last census. Only five counties, all in Leinster, have grown in population since the Famine. Dublin is up by 260% since 1851 – everywhere outside of Leinster is down.
Leinster has the top five biggest towns in Ireland (little Louth has two! Drogheda with 44,135 people and Dundalk with 43,112). If we had the same population density as our neighbours in England – there would be over 30 million of us in the Republic.
If we had the same as the Dutch we’d have 45 million (and one hell of a football team).
But still, it feels like everything is crammed into Dublin and the rest of the country is looking for scraps.
Cork has a great airport, practically brand new, a pleasure to travel through and not nearly as busy as it should be. Seriously, Cork and Shannon could double the number of flights they see every day and cope handily.
There’s around three million of us not living in the Greater Dublin Area, but sometimes if feels like the politicians look out from the capital (if they look out at all) and imagine a few auld lads in flat caps driving donkey carts.
Any sane national development plan would be decentralising as much as possible out of overcrowded Dublin and putting more in Munster, Connacht (which hasn’t had much since Oliver Cromwell did his bit for population growth) and Ulster.
Nothing against Dublin but it’s time to look outside the Pale. And we can start by ensuring Cork, Shannon and Knock airports get more flights.