Since 1991 the population of our western and northwestern counties has risen by almost one-fifth - at almost the same rate as the population of the rest of the State. And in the most recent period - that between the two latest censuses of 2002 and 2006 - the population of Connacht actually increased fractionally more than the Dublin region, writes Garret FitzGerald
What is even more heartening, but also largely unrecognised, is that the gap between income levels in the west and in the Dublin region has also been largely bridged.Between 1969 and 2004, the purchasing power of incomes in the Dublin region rose 2.4 times; in the case of Connacht, the real income increase has been much faster - to over 3.3 times its 1969 level. And this has not been confined to Galway: indeed, incomes have risen even more rapidly in Leitrim, and by almost as much in Sligo and Roscommon.
While a generation ago the average inhabitant of the Dublin region had an income almost 60 per cent higher than that of people in Connacht, by 2004 that differential had already been reduced by almost three-quarters, to 16 per cent.
In fact, this understates the progress that has been made during this past generation in bridging the long-standing gap between the west and the east, because housing costs have risen much more rapidly in the Dublin area than elsewhere in the country.
When that factor is allowed for, the west/east income and living standards differential must have become even smaller. A significant factor in this process has been the large-scale replacement of farming, especially in Connacht, with other generally more viable and remunerative activities.
In 1971 more than half of those at work in Connacht were engaged in farming. Moreover, half of these were working on farms of fewer than 30 acres. But by 2002 less than 10 per cent of those at work in Connacht were in farming - and many of these were part-timers, earning additional income from other employment.
The transfer from farming to industrial activity in the west and northwest has been on a large scale.
Since the late 1960s, the proportion of the State's manufacturing net output located in these areas has trebled to 15 per cent of the total.
Moreover, many of our less well-off counties currently have their incomes supplemented by between 3 per cent and 7.5 per cent through social transfers, almost all of which come from the Dublin region.
In 2004, six-sevenths of our taxes on incomes were used to pay for these social transfers, which in the nature of things benefit, particularly, many less well-off counties, which tend to have older populations, and thus more pensioners.
The total amount of these net transfers in 2004 was about €900 million - one-quarter of which went to Connacht, another quarter to the rest of the Border, midlands and western (BMW) region, and most of the remainder to the southeast.
Three years later, these inter-county net transfers must exceed €1 billion.
In recent decades the economic and social problems of the southeast have never received the attention they deserve, partly because public attention has tended to be concentrated on the west.
Over the past 35 years, apart from Dublin, the southeast has had the slowest economic growth rate - one-quarter below that of the BMW region. As a result the average income level of the southeast is today the lowest of any region.
The reasons for the southeast falling behind deserve some study. From the early 1970s onwards, when the Republic joined the EU, this region was expected to benefit disproportionately from being the part of Ireland nearest the Continent, possessing three ports - Waterford, New Ross and Rosslare - which between them ought to have secured a good share of the huge increase in trade with that part of the world. Instead, the southeast has lost ground ever since.
Many in the region attribute its poor economic performance partly to the absence of a university in this area - a matter currently under review.
But another factor may have been a poor record in labour relations, and latching on to the university issue as if it were the only problem in the area could prevent a more thorough review being undertaken of other factors that may have been at work.
Since the time of the Buchanan Report in the mid-1960s, a fear of annoying local interests in rural areas outside the major provincial centres has consistently inhibited governments from promoting the development of provincial cities such as Waterford as alternative poles of growth.
As we have recently seen in the proposals for Civil Service decentralisation, the policy of Fianna Fáil governments in particular has been to spread their largesse ineffectively across more than 50 smaller centres at the expense of potential poles of growth such as Waterford.
It is, however, encouraging that, despite the negative impact of such perverse public policies, regional income disparities have nevertheless been so greatly reduced during the past 35 years.