Curtailing the Greater Dublin Area's share of the State's population at its current level of around 40 per cent, or reducing it, "is not a realistic objective", according to the National Spatial Strategy (NSS).
"It is equally unsustainable that an undue weight of future population growth in the State should take place in or adjoining the GDA (Greater Dublin Area)", the authors say. "Ireland, therefore, needs to get to the position where a wider range of locations is seen as similarly attractive".
The "fundamental approach" of the NSS is to encourage "greater spatial balance by strengthening areas and places in a structured way, rather than seeking to stop growth in Dublin", by designating alternative "gateways" and "hubs" to promote regional development.
If the GDA's population was to be stabilised at its current level, around 75 per cent of the jobs growth likely to take place in that area in the manufacturing and key services sectors over the next five years would have to take place instead in other regions.
"Such a scenario is clearly unrealistic. Firstly, it pre-supposes that all investment is mobile, which is not the case. Secondly, this rate of growth would be extremely difficult to create in the regions, given their current level of development.
"Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, diversion of this level of employment growth away from the GDA could damage the successful dynamic achieved in the GDA which is of vital national importance. In many cases, the choice for mobile international investment would then lie between locating in the Dublin area or elsewhere in the world." During the latter part of the 1990s, as the NSS notes, the performance of Dublin has been particularly significant in sectors such as internationally traded services to the point where 77 per cent of national employment in this sector is now located within the GDA.
"It is essential to the NSS that the performance of the economy of the GDA and surrounding counties is built upon so that its success, competitiveness and national role are sustained into the future," the strategy makes clear.
The population of the GDA - which includes Meath, Kildare and Wicklow - now is currently just over 1.5 million people, or 39.2 per cent of the total population of the State. That proportion has been steadily increasing over time - from 35.7 per cent in 1971 to 37.7 per cent in 1991.
Based on current demographic trends, the NSS projections suggest a GDA population of 1.9 million by 2020, out of a national population of 4.4 million. But if there was stronger economic growth, it could reach 2.2 million by 2020, out of a national population of 5 million. "If regional competitiveness is not enhanced, it is possible that up to four-fifths of future population growth could take place in the GDA, bringing its share of national population into the mid 40s", it warns.
"However, with the support of the NSS, this will happen at a slower rate than would otherwise be the case." The authors acknowledge that the 2002 census showed lower population growth in the GDA between 1996 and 2002 than was expected. "It is possible that previous restrictions on housing supply, now being overcome, may have curtailed population growth in Dublin", they say. Even within the GDA, population growth happened at a faster rate in Meath, Kildare and Wicklow than in Dublin itself. Increases in population in Westmeath, Wexford, Laois, Louth and Carlow also "confirm a widening of the Dublin commuter belt, well beyond the GDA".
This provided "strong evidence that Dublin is becoming a dispersed city", with high-tech industries, hotels, business parks, technology campuses and shopping centres located around its edges drawing their workforces from places up to and beyond 80 km away.
