Plan is ambitious for our main cities – but there’s no strategy for anywhere else

THE draft ‘National Planning Framework (NPF) Ireland 2040

– Our Plan’ identifies many of the issues and choices the country faces. A growing population, housing shortages and transport congestion, particularly in Dublin, along with relatively poor economic growth and decline in other parts of the country, are just some of the pressing issues.

The draft NPF demonstrates the urgent need to take decisions for “an increasing population in a balanced and coherent way”, as noted by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Along with decisions on capital investment, our political leaders will make choices which will affect all our lives for the next several decades, for good or ill.

The three regional assemblies are preparing regional spatial and economic strategies which will aim to implement and deliver on the regional targets set out in the NPF.

Earlier this week, Mr Varadkar said that the National Development Plan (NDP) had to be realistic and could not turn every town into a city, but he added that development needed to be rebalanced away from Dublin and our other cities needed to be built up.

However, the current NPF is quite aspirational in this area and does not address regional growth in a focused way, with no specific strategy given for any place outside the five cities.

Ireland is expected to grow by one million people over the next 20 years, and the Western Region counties – Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Clare – can become the home and workplace for many of these.

The region has the capacity to grow and wants an ambitious NPF to help us deliver as an economically and socially dynamic region.

The draft NPF contains regional population growth targets; though overall it is very clearly focused on urban and city-led growth.

Of the three regions, the Northern and Western Region has the most challenging population growth targets in that a larger share of growth is to occur in centres outside the city – Galway – than in the other regions.

Population growth in the large towns (over 10,000) needs to be 40pc, or almost twice projected national average growth population, if the region is to reach its overall target.

This is a welcome ambitious target for the region, but achieving it will need significant resources and direction, none of which is identified in the draft NPF.

It also places a huge onus of responsibility on centres such as Sligo and Letterkenny as key drivers in the region. While each of the five cities have identified ‘growth enablers’, there is none identified for key drivers such as Sligo and Letterkenny.

While there is recognition of the weak urban structure of the North West, no place in the North West is named as being key to the development of the region as a whole. Without such a focus, it seems likely that the North West will find it more difficult to realise its potential.

‘Ireland 2040 – Our Plan’ appears to recognise that poor connectivity is a factor in the lack of development in some regions. For example, the investment in transport networks in particular has had the effect of promoting the development of the capital.

In ‘Our Plan’, there is no commitment to improving connectivity between the key centres in the west and north west such as Letterkenny, Sligo and Galway. Instead, it is suggested that accessibility will increase only by incremental improvement and only after compact growth in urban areas is achieved.

This suggests a lack of understanding as to the role of infrastructure generally, and transport connectivity in particular, in enabling development, and does not demonstrate any real commitment in ‘Our Plan’ to addressing structural weakness in the north, west and midlands.

IT is often suggested that Dublin needs to develop to benefit Ireland as a whole, so the arguments are made to invest there.

Little has been said about how Ireland needs its regions to develop to benefit the country as a whole, and the need to invest in critical infrastructure, which has been long underfunded or delayed.

The ESRI has just published ‘Prospects for Irish Regions and Counties’, which examines much of the data and trends used to inform the NPF.

In some ways the message is starker; noting that excessive concentration in and around Dublin may have negative effects on national growth.

The ESRI report points to the dangers of excessive concentration in the capital as well as the need to invest in inter-regional infrastructure in order to promote regional and national growth.

The Western Development Commission welcomes the ambitious targets for the Northern and Western Region and is keen to play its part in contributing to this growth; but the region needs the tools to deliver.

Ian Brannigan is acting CEO of the Western Development Commission.

The WDC is a statutory body promoting social and economic development in the Western Region, covering counties Clare, Donegal, Galway, Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo