The preliminary report of Census 2002, published by the Central Statistics Office yesterday, paints a fascinating picture of the demographic changes which have taken place in this State before our own eyes.
In the short time-frame of six years, coinciding with the emergence of the Celtic Tiger, the population of the Republic has increased to just under 4 million persons, not just the highest in the independent history of the State but well back to the post-Famine era of 1871. The scale of the increase - 291,249 persons or 8 per cent between 1996 and 2002 - is staggering in size, haphazard geographically and lopsided towards Leinster. It turns any sense of a spatial strategy on its head.
It will come as no great surprise to learn that the population of all four provinces has grown in the last six years. The increase was most marked at 9.4 per cent in Leinster and least pronounced at 5.3 per cent in the three counties of Ulster in the Republic. However, it should sound some alarm bells for planners that the April census was the first in which the population of Leinster exceeded two million persons. Its share of the overall population has increased in every census since 1926 compounding, once again, the imbalance towards the eastern region over north, south and west.
There is no compensation in the fact that the 6.1 per cent growth in the population of the Dublin region is lower than that for the State as a whole. Or that the population of Dublin city increased by only 2.7 per cent. The picture painted starkly in this census is that the explosive growth in the ever-widening commuter belt around the capital has come about for economic reasons which were unplanned and are undesirable.Kildare and Meath have expanded by a fifth; Westmeath by 13.8 per cent; Wexford, Laois, Louth and Carlow by more than 10 per cent.
Fascinating though the figures may be, they reflect the absence of strategic planning on behalf of the authorities. Is this spread of development sustainable in the longer-term?