Rural Ireland

Rural Ireland is great, but it’s time to stop pretending that it’s any better than our towns, according to Pat Fitzpatrick

Last straw. Last legs. Last call, if the story is about a pub. It’s interesting what comes back when you put ‘rural Ireland last’ into Google. Judging by the end-of-days language, you’d imagine the population of rural Ireland is down to four off-grid hippies sharing a yurt with Danny Healy-Rae. That’s not just a pitch for the worst sitcom of all time — it’s completely wrong.

It turns out we are still one of the most rural societies in Europe. Based on the 2016 Census, 42pc of the population lives in rural areas, compared to a 27pc average across the EU. There is nothing to suggest this 42pc is going to be forced to move into town any time soon — the latest figures from the CSO show that the percentage at risk of poverty in rural areas is only slightly higher than those in towns and cities, 17.2pc compared to 15.1pc. This gap is narrowing — in 2013 it was 20.5pc in rural areas, 13.4pc in towns.

The ‘last legs’ Google search result comes from Galway hurler, Conor Cooney. He made the headlines while doing interviews before the All-Ireland Club Hurling final earlier this year, when he said that more had to be done to help rural Ireland, because it’s on its last legs. Now, Cooney knows what he’s talking about. He’s seen small GAA clubs forced to amalgamate in order to field a team. He had to move jobs from the small local national school where he taught to a school 20 minutes away, when the model measuring special-needs hours was changed and his original role was deemed surplus to requirements.

Fair enough, but that isn’t confined to rural areas. Talk to anyone involved in early childcare or primary schools in urban areas, and you’ll hear a similar story of scrapping for scarce resources. That just tends to be the way with public services in this country.

It’s like we’re addicted to the sadness of a decline in rural Ireland, even though it isn’t actually happening. There is an obvious reason for this — we’re getting older. The 2016 Census showed that 37pc of the population was over the age of 45, compared to 27pc in 1986.

We’re weighed down with the burst of nostalgia for the good old days that hits us all when we reach 45. We look at one small GAA club struggling to field a minor team; we look at our own sagging bellies, and, linking the two, conclude that this is very sad and something must be done before it’s too late. (A bit of cycling, usually.)

I don’t want to imply that culchies are pulling the wool on the city folk — I know more than one farmer who has gone part-time because it doesn’t deliver a livelihood any more. On the other hand, “Jesus Christ, look at the size of that” is something you’ll hear more than once from a townie driving through the country, rubber-necking a new-build mansion that is four times the size of his own place in the sunny uplands of urban Ireland.

Rural Ireland is a going concern, and the figures bear it out. The latest stats suggest that people in the 19 to 25 age bracket move away from rural Ireland to study and find that first job, but a lot of them come back in their mid-30s to rear a family. There is no sign of the place emptying out, or anything like it.

The best thing that urban Ireland could do for rural Ireland is stop acting like it’s another country. It isn’t. The people there drive the same cars, watch the same TV, drink the same gin, worry about their kids, support teams in the Premier League, follow the same people on Instagram and wear the same clothes by and large, with a slight bias towards pointy-toed tan shoes for the men.

If you were looking for one difference, you’d have to say that country people seem happier with their lot. Put it this way, when was the last time a local walking along a quiet country road flagged you down and said they’d give anything to live in a city? Never.

This is mainly down to chronic traffic, because we insist on treating suburbs as if they were rural theme parks. We know we need to build high-density housing but can’t bring ourselves to do it, because deep down, we still think that anything urban is contrary to the nature of the true Gael.

So instead, we go for giant estates full of semi-d replica farmhouses with a tiny field out the back. Worse still, we queue in suburban supermarket car parks to buy vegetables off a bearded guy who is literally pretending to be a farmer.

For all the modernity in Ireland now, there is a weird hankering to return to some imaginary rural past — as if the 60pc of people who live in urban areas were forced off the land at some stage, by (let’s face it) the Brits.

This doesn’t just lead to four-hour commutes, with all that ecological damage that entails. The notion that cities are a betrayal of a country’s true nature isn’t new. History is full of fascist chancers that built a hateful philosophy around the land — one of the Nazi’s favourite slogans was Blood and Soil.

Populists from Hitler to Donald Trump have pitched themselves as the champion of the real people against treacherous liberals living in the cities. Boris Johnson would probably give it a lash if he hadn’t been Mayor of London.

The hidden message is an attack on outsiders, because immigrants usually settle in cities and towns. I’m not suggesting that Macra Na Feirme is about to resurrect the SS — the welcome for strangers is alive and well in rural Ireland. But we don’t need to look far to see how quickly people can turn on each other.

We are right to be proud of rural Ireland — the only thing better than the views are the people who call it home. But let’s stop pretending it’s more important than the place where most of us actually live.