New national plan consigns Drogheda to second division

Dear Sir,

THE government’s draft National Planning Framework – the twenty year plan designed to replace the National Spatial Strategy – has officially consigned Drogheda to the second division.

The plan, which affords Drogheda precisely the same status as 40 other Irish towns with populations in excess of 10,000 sounds the death knell for city status and will have massive implications for jobs and long-term government backed investment in Ireland’s largest town.

Tragically this much-vaunted plan fails mention Drogheda even once across its 150 glossy pages.

The writing was on the wall when the government refused to extend the Borough Boundary. It’s now official; Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance have relegated our town to the second division of urban centres.

The Plan presents no clear vision for major urban centres like Drogheda where we have the potential to grow and develop to take the pressure off Dublin. It effectively ignores the relationship between Drogheda and the wider East Meath area in terms of our scale and population with the scope of our future development to be determined by a second tier ‘Regional Spatial & Economic Strategy’ to be led by a Regional Assembly. We are lumped in with Wicklow town when we should be considered to be more akin to Waterford.

The danger for Drogheda is that unlike the National Spatial Strategy which did enough damage to the town, this plan will have a legal and statutory basis. This means that government decisions on everything from jobs to roads will have to comply with a Plan we’ll be stuck with for 20 years.

This is the most worrying development for Drogheda for many years and it will have massive consequences for the status of town for a long time to come.

Drogheda needs to be enabled to take its rightful place in the hierarchy of major urban areas as our scale, population and potential insists. This plan consigns us to the second division.