RITE AND REASON: Dublin must not be allowed to grow and grow to the detriment of rural Ireland, writes Cardinal Cahal Daly
The 2002 Census returns reveal an extraordinary imbalance in terms of population and of material prosperity between the urban conglomerations of Dublin and east Leinster, and the rural areas of Ireland, especially of the west and the Border counties. The population of the State has increased to an unprecedented degree, but the bulk of the increase has occurred in Leinster, parts of which are on the way to becoming a large suburban sprawl of Dublin.
The 2002 Census does show an increase, however small, in the population of the rural counties. These increases are welcome. But population increase must be accompanied by reversal of rural economic decline. Population growth should be seen as an opportunity, not as a problem. Jobs must be created for the new young men and women who will be coming into the labour market - and the jobs should be also in rural Ireland.
Dublin must not be allowed to grow and grow to the detriment of rural Ireland, and, indeed, to the detriment of the quality of life of its own inhabitants. To keep our young people in the rural areas, ancillary off-farm employment outlets have to be provided in smaller towns within reasonable commuter reach of their homes, so that they can commute to work but continue to live and spend and socialise and save and marry and settle in the rural parishes.
Pope John XXIII, the "good Pope John", who was himself of small farmer stock, addressed the problems of rural dwellers in an encyclical called Mater et Magistra, in 1961. He asked this question: "What can be done to reduce the disproportion in production efficiency between agriculture on the one hand, and industry and public services on the other; and to ensure that agricultural living standards approximate as closely as possible to those enjoyed by city dwellers?"
Part of the answer, he argued, must come from "the suitable development of essential public services in country areas: roads, transport, means of communications, housing, health services, elementary, technical and professional education "
He went on: "While it is true that farm produce is mainly intended for the satisfaction of man's primary needs, and the price should therefore be within the means of all consumers, this cannot be used as an argument for keeping a section of the population - farm workers - in a permanent state of economic and social inferiority, depriving them of the wherewithal for a decent standard of living. This would be diametrically opposed to the common good".
Written in 1961, the words are of striking relevance to Ireland in the year 2002.
The experience of the rural area of Vendée in western Francs is relevant for us. I spent a week there in 1999 to take part in a conference. For generations the Vendéans saw their central governments as being completely uninterested in rural areas.
The counter-strategy adopted in Vendée was to set up broadly-based local development groups to promote the overall social and material and cultural and spiritual well-being of their areas. They identified the infrastructural deficit in rural areas as one main cause of rural decline. By this they meant the neglect of roads and railways, communications and telecommunications, transport, postal services, housing, education, etc.
These they saw as the proper entitlement of rural, no less than urban, citizens. They saw these services as ways of getting people into the area, rather than ways of moving people out of it towards Paris. They wanted to bring jobs to people, and not force people to leave their own area for jobs in the metropolis. They wanted an infrastructure that would make rural areas attractive to industry and investment.
They sought to develop smaller industries, with links to the local communities, and with lines of production appropriate to local conditions. They set about the fostering of local initiatives, local entrepreneurial spirit, local skills and crafts. They gave primacy to self-help and self-development of local communities, supported by central government, but not indefinitely dependent on financial hand-outs.
If the population and prosperity imbalances in Ireland between urban and rural dwellers are not tackled, if metropolitan overgrowth and rural depopulation are allowed to continue unabated, the quality of life in Ireland, metropolitan as well as rural, will deteriorate still further, Ireland will become a less desirable place to live in or to visit, and immense damage will be done to the "social capital" of the country.
It is to be fervently hoped that the pending National Spatial Strategy will address these problems comprehensively and honestly and will propose effective ways of resolving them. Otherwise, future generations will be asking, how did the politicians and planners and decision makers, the economists and the entrepreneurs, in the closing decades of the 20th century, despite some remarkable achievements, get so many fundamental things so wrong?
Cardinal Daly is the former primate of the Catholic Church in Ireland. This is an abbreviated version of an address recently at the O'Carolan Harp Festival in Keadue, Co Roscommon. The Cardinal's father was from Keadue.