The announcement last week that a shopping centre is planned for Neilstown in west Dublin came as a jolt to some commentators. The development of the Jervis Centre and the Blanchard stown Town Centre last year, together with the current construction of the Quarryvale Centre has been accompanied by a sustained commentary that the Dublin area was over-shopped.

This view has become more muted in the light of the sustained economic growth and resultant increase in consumer expdenditure over the last three years - but the prospect of an additional centre has, however, once again reopened "the over-shopped" debate.

The planned distribution of shopping for the Dublin area is based on promoting Dublin city centre (especially the areas centred on Henry Street and Grafton Street) as the primary shopping areas for the city, the region and indeed the State.

Within the rest of the city, each area should have a hierarchy of district, local and neighbourhood centres. It was intended that the three western areas of Tallaght, Lucan/Clondalkin and Blanchardstown should each develop a town centre shopping centre to cater for the 100,000 people expected to live in each town. These towns were to be separated by a green belt area and all three towns from the rest of Dublin city by another green belt area, within which the western section of the C-ring motorway was to be built.

It was the attractiveness of this motorway that led, however, to a breakdown in the planned distribution of shopping centres.

The first of the new town shopping centres to be built was in Tallaght, which at that time was the largest shopping centre in Ireland. Work was due to begin on the Blanchardstown centre when in 1991 Dublin County Council voted to rezone 180 acres of land strategically located at the junction of the M50 and the Galway Road.

This Quarryvale site was considered by its promoters to be a regional if not a national shopping centre and by its proposers within the council as a new town centre for Lucan/Clondalkin.

In response to the designation of the Quarryvale lands, the Green Property Company announced at a press conference in 1991 that it was pulling the plug on the Blanchardstown shopping centre. Some years later, however, they decided to build the centre which opened for business last year.

In a somewhat similar fashion, it was widely perceived that the owners of the original site for the Lucan/Clondalkin town centre had given up on their project.

Two factors, perhaps, spurred the promoters of the original town centre site into action. The first would have been the currently buoyant economy. The second may have been that the 1993 Dublin County Development Plan, which had designated the Quarryvale site, rather incongruously continued to zone the Neilstown lands to the south-west of Quarryvale to provide for major town centre activities.

With the development plan due for review next year, and now that Quarryvale is under construction, South Dublin County Council may have sought to change the zoning of the Neilstown site, reducing the retail floor area.

Notwithstanding the existence of an outline permission, bringing forward a development proposal for Neilstown may be considered a pre-emptive strike against such an eventuality.

The question remains, however, that if major shopping centres are built at Neilstown and Quarryvale, can they both survive and what impact will they have on Tallaght, Blanchardstown and the city centre ?

On the plus side, the 1996 census reveals that population, both nationally and in Dublin, is growing. Emigration is ceasing and immigration is helping to expand the economy. The age structure of the population is changing, with a greater proportion now in the productive 20 to 60 age bracket.

The Irish Economic Report for August, 1997, notes that, according to the latest National Accounts, aggregate consumer spending is estimated to have grown by 6.3 per cent in 1996. This was also the fastest annual increase recorded since the current expansion got underway in 1993, bringing the average rate of growth in consumer spending for the 1993-1996 period to 5.5 per cent per annum. Retail data for the first five months of 1997 indicate that consumer spending has continued to grow vigorously. Over the January/May period, retail sales volumes were running at 5.5 per cent on average.

The Central Bank (Autumn, 1997) also noted the 6.3 per cent increase in the volume of personal consumption in 1996. The bank reported that consumer spending remains very positive supported by growing disposable income, an improving labour market and relatively low interest rates. It concluded that the prospects are for a continuation of strong demand underpinned by continuing increases in disposable incomes. This would be further strengthened by falls in interest rates following membership of the EMU.

The perception generally held prior to the announcement of the Neilstown centre was that the continued increase in consumer expenditure in the coming years would ensure that sufficient demand existed to cater for the supply of floor space proposed. The Neilstown Centre now raises questions in this regard.

It will be necessary to carry out a quantative analysis as to whether there is sufficient demand in the Dublin region for the volume of shopping floor space now proposed. Pending that analysis, there are a number of qualitative factors increasingly coming in to play.

The first is the sheer sameness or blandness of new shopping centres. If each new centre simply has the same shops (e.g. Boots, Marks & Spencer, Dunnes etc.) as are currently available elsewhere, then consumers will be unwilling to travel long distances to visit new centres. This attitude will become more marked as travelling around Dublin by car becomes more unpleasant and difficult. In recent years, rapidly increasing car ownership rates have increased traffic congestion dramatically. One outcome of this may be for people to work, shop, socialise, travel to school, etc., more and more within that sector of the town in which they live.

In such a scenario, the so-called regional shopping centres may not attract the numbers of customers that they expect. In addition, this trend will be reinforced by on-line shopping on the Internet and by home delivery from the local supermarket.

The shopping centres which will succeed in the future are those which provide an attractive funfilled environment within the complex with easy access and which provide a varied range of activities such as cinemas, restaurants, offices, work places and other community services. In short, the re-creation of the mixed-use lively environment which historically made town centres the attractive places they can be today.

The evolution of retailing in Dublin in the coming years will be interesting to watch. With the arrival of the Neilstown Centre, the opportunity and potential for additional new large centres is probably limited. However, the only constant which we can be sure of is change - and this certainly applies to the retail sector.

Tony Manahan is principal of Mahanan and Associates, chartered town planners. He is past president of the Irish Planning Institute