Once again, it would appear that a Government is paying lip-service to saving the West while pursuing policies that fail to address its long-term decline. A piecemeal approach, rooted in the politics of the parish pump and scatter-gun grant aid, has been unveiled by Minister of State, Mr O Cuiv, in preference to the larger vision offered last July by the Western Development Commission (WDC). Taken in conjunction with the Government's failure to implement elements of the National Development Plan on time, it is a recipe for disaster.
In its document entitled "State of the West" the WDC recommended the establishment of two working groups, comprising the most senior civil servants, to advance the development of transport, electricity and telecommunications in the West and to produce a costed development programme by next February. It also recommended an investment programme for towns in the region. The document found the economic gap between East and West was continuing to widen and that the remedial measures proposed in the National Development Plan would not address it.
That WDC report was the fruit of four years of hard work and comprised a detailed analysis of what is required by the economy of the region. But, within months, in what was seen as the Government's response, Mr O Cuiv announced that £20 million would be spread amongst the most depopulated rural areas over a two-year period. Residents of the Cooley Peninsula who had been affected by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease would also benefit.
Such a response was nothing short of a studied insult to the work of the WDC. Rather than address the big picture and the needs of the region as a whole in terms of roads, transport, sanitary services, energy and communications, the Coalition Government appears to have opted for a parish pump response. Given that approach, the estimated growth of half-a-million in our population during the next ten years will, no doubt, swell an already over-bloated Dublin conurbation.