State bodies should be active in providing new services and infrastructure in poorer parts of the State, IBEC said yesterday. A director of the business lobby, Mr John Brennan, said this would make such regions more attractive to business investors.
Mr Brennan, who has responsibility for Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and Athlone, was responding to new Central Statistics Office's figures showing disposable income per person - i.e. after-tax - in the Border, midlands and west was 9 per cent below the State average in 1998.
The survey said people in the south-east had the lowest disposable income. The figure there was 12 per cent below the national average.
This contrasted with disposable income per person in the in Dublin region, which was 16 per cent above the State average in 1998. Income per person in the southern and eastern regions was 3 per cent ahead of the State average.
The survey said average disposable income per head throughout the State rose to £9,324 in 1998 from £5,660 in 1991.
Mr Brennan said the most common practice was for State bodies to provide services and infrastructure in reaction to investment. But such development was more likely to follow infrastructure already in place.
The absence of such investment - partly due to the poor quality of road, telecoms and electricity infrastructure - led to lower disposable income in the west and other regions, Mr Brennan said.
SIPTU said the provision of training and retraining was crucial to attempts to increase disposable income. The trade union's regional director in the south-east and midlands, Mr Mike Jennings, said this was the only means of ensuring that inward investment would benefit communities blighted by high unemployment.
Mr Jennings cited "pretty desperate pockets of poverty and unemployment" in parts of Wicklow, Wexford and Waterford.
He said: "Unemployment is a key social determinant and still abnormally high even with the so-called Celtic Tiger and so-called full-employment. There's no point in attracting high-skilled, high-tech jobs into an area of deprivation without training and retraining."
The CSO estimates were derived from wages, income from self-employment and transfer payments from the State.
