My op-ed on balanced regional development was published in Sunday Independent on 22nd September, 2024.
The continued bloat of the greater Dublin area is selling the whole country short.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are laying the groundwork for continued imbalanced growth in Ireland, overlooking the potential of developing our regional cities.
While Fine Gael calls for infrastructure and Fianna Fáil calls for more housing, neither party is showing any real understanding of how consequential — or indeed how interconnected — these election issues are.
It is not enough to say we need tens of thousands of new homes — it also matters where they are built. It's also not enough to say we need a "Department of Infrastructure”, as the Taoiseach has proposed. It matters what infrastructure is built.
As the State grapples with a population surge brought about by a decade's worth of strong economic performance, Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien's draft review of the National Planning Framework is a blueprint for an even more lopsided country, with the vast majority of population growth targeted for Dublin and its environs.
It is a reactionary response to current pressures, completely lacking vision for development outside of Dublin.
If we are to have a million extra people living in the Republic by 2040, should we really be planning, as the minister's new National Planning Framework is suggesting, to squeeze most of them into Dublin instead of prioritising population growth across the regional cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford?
O'Brien might lament that while the original 2018 planning framework set a path for closing the gap between Dublin and the regional cities, the reality is that most of the growth since then has happened in the capital.
Others might argue that Dublin is where the builders want to build and where the demand is. This line of reasoning is, of course, a capitulation.
It makes more sense to adjust the policy such that we do get rapid growth of the regions while simultaneously easing the pressure on our capital, rather than to throw in the towel on the possibility of a more balanced — and more prosperous — island.
More than any other infrastructure, metropolitan rail systems are needed for rapid growth of cities. While the evidence for this can be seen across the world, the strongest example for it in Ireland is in our capital. The growth of places along the Dart, Luas and commuter lines in recent decades —such as Dún Laoghaire, Drumcondra, Milltown or Malahide — didn't happen despite these systems being planned and built. It happened because of them. When this type of investment in infrastructure is made, an area will flourish as a result.
If we are serious about balanced regional development, we need ambitious targets for population growth in our regional cities, to the degree that investment in high-capacity, high- frequency rail is justified. Shamefully, the population targets in the current draft of the NPF review are too low to justify these kinds of investments.
It is time to display ambition and foresight when planning our future growth.
The National Planning Framework is an opportunity to rebalance our island, and in turn resolve challenges in health services, housing supply and congestion — in our regional cities as much as in our capital.
But the current draft fails to do this.
We urgently need a visionary National Planning Framework that views our increasing population with anticipation and opportunity rather than surrendering to the bloat of Dublin.
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