WRC key to Atlantic Corridor plan
THE WRC SHOULD BE A VITAL PART OF THE GOVERNMENT’S REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY ARGUES JOHN BRADLEY
A report on the financial and economic feasibility of restoring the Athenry to Claremorris section of the Western Rail Corridor ( WRC) was commissioned in 2018 by Iarnrod Eireann (acting on behalf of the Department of Transport) and carried out by the consultancy firm EY.
It was finally released to the public on January 8th. The EY report concluded that there was no basis for the WRC restoration in either narrow financial terms or in any wider economic terms.
If the methodological validity and accuracy of the EY analysis had been broadly accepted by policy makers and the wider public, all we would be left with would be sadness at the failure to realise a dream.
However, as debate starts up on the EY report in this newspaper as well as in others, on the manner in which it was commissioned and on its damningly negative conclusions, it has become abundantly clear that the EY work is riddled with errors, flawed reasoning and omissions.
In the immediate aftermath of the publication of the EY report, West on Track, a voluntary group who have worked over the years in support of the WRC restoration, has brought together a small group of experts who have volunteered to produce a substantial “alternative” appraisal of the WRC restoration that addresses the egregious errors and omissions of the EY version.
It is not my intention in this short article to dwell on the factual errors of the EY work.
Rather, I want to focus on a crucial and shocking omission from that work.
Namely, the complete failure to place the WRC restoration firmly within the wider context of the need to revive the central and northern region of the Atlantic Economic Corridor which is effectively centred on Sligo-Ballina- Castlebar.
There is no regional strategic context within the EY report, even one in line with their original weak terms of reference.
The EY analysis appears to have been carried out in a
silo that is disconnected from wider regional development strategy of government, such as is articulated in Project Ireland 2040 and the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy drawn up the Northern & Western Regional Assembly.
The town of Sligo (population just over 20,000) was designated by the Northern &
Western Regional Assembly in their Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy as one of three regional growth centres in the N&W region consisting of eight counties.
Indeed, Sligo is the linchpin of the north-west region since Letterkenny is too far north and relates mainly to Derry, and Athlone is too far east and relates mainly to Dublin.
However, no matter how rapidly Sligo may develop between now and 2040, it is unlikely to grow to the size of Galway (population 80,000).
So the only way that Sligo can take on its designated role as a growth centre and help drive growth in the struggling towns of North Mayo, Leitrim and Roscommon is by having better communication and transport links with those towns and their hinterland regions.
Although the current debate on the WRC relates to the linking of Athenry (on the Dublin- Galway line) to Claremorris (on the Dublin-Westport line), there is a blindingly obvious need to add the link from Claremorris to Collooney (on the Dublin-Sligo line).
That would re-establish a north-south rail link joining Sligo to Limerick.
With this link in place, it would gradually become as natural to do business on the north-south axis as it currently is to look east to Dublin for everything.
This is the only way that small western towns can strengthen and grow.
They need to hang together, or else they will hang separately!
The time has come for the counties of Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, Galway and Roscommon to build economic scale by creating more efficient transport and communication links between their small, but often thriving towns and villages.
Old fashioned economic thinking asserts that big is always better.
That only the five largest urban centres of Dublin, Cork,
Limerick, Galway and Waterford have any real future and the rest will have to be satisfied with the crumbs. This is sheer nonsense!
The full restoration of the Western Rail Corridor is not the complete solution.
But it should be a vital part of any government regional development strategy that claims to pay more than lip service to spreading Irish economic success to its long neglected regions in the west.
The EY report has shamefully trashed this view, paid for by public funding.
John Bradley (above) was an economic Research Professor at the ESRI and has published extensively on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling. He has acted as a consultant to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the OECD, the World Bank, many EU member state governments and has carried out research and training projects in the EU, Western Balkans and Africa.