The Government should heed this week's call by Henk van der Kamp, president of the Irish Planning Institute, for the current National Spatial Strategy (NSS) to be re-cast. Though Census 2006 will paint a fuller picture, projections suggest that the number of people in the State will reach 5.3 million in 2020 and that Ireland may even regain the eight million population it had before the Great Famine. A much more moderate increase was envisaged by those who compiled the NSS, which is enough in itself for the strategy to be revisited.
It is also an opportune time to take stock, given that the Government is compiling a new National Development Plan for the period 2007-2012. This important exercise must not repeat the mistake made previously of putting the cart before the horse, by adopting an NDP without first having a coherent spatial strategy already in place.
As it stands, the NSS is incoherent, as well as being out of date. It designated far too many "gateways" and "hubs" and, by spreading development so widely, would do little or nothing to curb the growth of Dublin by enabling other centres to attain critical mass. But the ink was scarcely dry on this flawed strategy when the Government compounded its central weakness with a decentralisation programme aimed at scattering 10,300 public servants to 53 locations in 25 counties. That programme is now in tatters because of strong resistance among employees of State agencies, in particular, to move to places with few of the amenities or facilities they enjoy in the capital. Had the 920 public servants slated to be transferred to Cork been offered the city as an option, rather than be dispersed to the county's towns, the take-up might have been more impressive.
More generally, as Mr van der Kamp said, we need to consider the consequences of a doubling of Ireland's population from its low level in the 1970s. The notion that we can continue living in low-density housing estates or in one-off houses needs to be scotched. So, too, does the idea that we are going to be able to get around by car - especially if a projected three million cars in 2020 turns out to be true. Higher density residential development in places well-served by public transport offers the only sustainable solution. We must also seek to counter the dominance of Dublin by creating the conditions to allow Cork, for example, to double its population - or to go even further, as Dr Edward Walsh has proposed, by promoting an "Atlantic Gateway" involving Cork, Limerick and Galway, with Shannon airport as one of its hubs. One thing is certain - the present laissez faire approach to spatial planning will not work.