Relentless economic advancement means flight of our rural youth to larger urban areas is unstoppable
FOSSA is a hamlet understandably not too well known to those who live outside the Co Kerry frontier. Yet in the Deep South it is a place which has kind of come centre stage for Gaelic football aficionados. For this is, as they say, the home place of the latest wonderkind, who it is believed will transform the fortunes of the county team.
David Clifford, following a whirlwind apprenticeship as an underage player, is now stepping into the senior squad. The weight of expectation on what he might do this summer is already unrealistic.
It is also unfair, given the maxim that youthful talent must be given time and space to reach the giddy heights. But these are strictly sporting concerns. In any case, the presumption is that older, wiser, and experienced heads will ensure his transition to the cauldron of the senior game will be gradual and nuanced.
Meanwhile, the Government prepares to unleash its ‘National Development Plan’. And we can only wonder what the future holds for the countless minientities of population, such as Fossa, that make up the fabric of rural Ireland. The ultimate question remains... will such a place continue to haemorrhage its youth, generation after generation?
Ireland is not alone in trying to contain a reasonable balance between town and country. What has been described as the push and pull factor – where the big population centres act like a magnet for the young – is a feature of the developed world. In Europe, urbanisation is accelerating by the day.
The continent’s major cities, including Dublin, continue to grow and grow. Meanwhile, those farther from the centre of things become ever more isolated.
In many ways this human tide is nigh impossible to halt. It may simply be the way things are, and are going to be. Apart from any other factor, old patterns of work are undergoing a minirevolution. For example, farming is a minuscule employer compared to days of yore. Therefore, for those in the hinterlands, the move is invariably towards landing a job, either in Dublin or another urban location. For those who leave Ireland in search of work the drift is inevitably to city life.
It was hoped the wonders of the internet might offer a renaissance of sorts for provincial Ireland. Distance working with people connected through the power of their laptop, to employer, customers, and potential markets, would compensate for the fact they may be living in small-sized communities. Much credit is due to those involved in the sprawl of high-tech hubs around the country, determined to forge a career path in their own place.
But for many it is still a battle trying to compete with the big guns in Dublin and elsewhere.
Part of the problem in trying to have a better spread of population nationally, is that local politicking can scupper the best laid plans.
Back in the 1960s, we had a somewhat infamous decentralisation blueprint entitled the Buchanan Report. It floundered in a sea of regional disagreement and naked self-interest. There have been other ill-fated attempts over the years to try to chart a better future for the western seaboard, the Midlands and the Border regions. These are the areas where the population drain has historically been most acute. But nobody has really succeeded in turning back the tide.
The result is that in Ireland we now have a range of contrasting problems between east and west. In Dublin, and also in the sinews of the capital which stretch for 80km and more, there is the much-documented housing crisis. And a transport plan for this region’s ever-burgeoning population will cost millions of euro in the coming years.
Meanwhile, ‘down in the sticks’ there are other hassles and headaches. Lack of internet access, as well as intangibles such as rural isolation, enmesh with a shortage of suitable jobs.
And so we hear the plaintive cry of local communities who feel under threat on a variety of fronts. Some bewail the demise of their local post office or Garda station, while the painful annual exodus of the Leaving Cert class for destinations far and near is without end.
Across the Irish Sea the gravitational pull of capital cities is graphically expressed in the powerhouse which is the greater London area. Meanwhile, the struggling one-time industrial heartlands in the north of England are testimony to a range of demographic shifts.
In the UK, the exodus to the south-east is seriously alarming many planners. It was a growing sense of provincial alienation which especially powered the Brexit vote. All the while London house prices – simply on the basis of demand – have stretched beyond the reach of many middle-income earners.
FOR its part, France has also long made strenuous efforts to protect the ‘élan vital’ of the local village. Many inhabitants of Paris and other metropolitan centres preserve a conviction the country’s rural idyll is something precious to be preserved.
But, as is the case in Ireland, too many politicians pay lip service to what is all too often a kind of a dream. There is indeed a national awareness that the regions must be protected, but the sad reality is the flight to the larger urban centres here also is proving unstoppable.
In Ireland we are at a pivotal time in our development with the publication of this mega plan for regional development. The devil will be in the detail. Much will depend on whether unpopular decisions will be taken for the common good.
Whatever happens, great imagination and political courage will be required to halt the decline in vast swathes of the Irish countryside. And even then, turning around what has become the natural order of things will be a battle against the odds. There is the faintest consolation that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says the existing rail network is not under threat. Our train services should be a key artery linking the regions. But they have been starved of investment for years – and fares are far too expensive.
As a side issue, the old county structure on which the GAA forged its identity is also at risk from a growing geographical disparity.
Dublin and its neighbours have an accelerating advantage over their less populated country cousins. But, at least for now, down in Fossa there is some consolation in fledgling youth – and the promise of golden moments of sport to come.