David McWilliams: We need to move public servants out of Dublin

In a series of articles, The Irish Times explores five challenges facing rural Ireland – diversity and migration; poverty; rapid growth; post-recession recovery; and depopulation – and ways to overcome them.

There can be few more beautiful views than the Twelve Pins on a summer day, changing colour as each cloud casts a unique shadow highlighting the gleaming quartzite peaks and ridges. From Farrells’ Road just above Roundstone in Connemara, the bog opens up on either side revealing this ancient highway, now no more than a track, which snakes its way between the mountains and the sea.

For centuries it was the main road connecting the various villages and settlements around this neck of the woods. The main transport mode was by currach, linking the small ports and the islands with each other but, for the more intrepid inland traveller, this path was their M50.

Population movement, whether voluntary or forced, is the history of humanity

Turf, cut in the bog, would have been hauled down this road to be traded for fish with the fishermen of the Aran Islands, who were masters of the seas, but had no bog and thus, no winter fuel.

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People have been coming and going for centuries around here. It’s not uncommon to meet older people who know the streets of London or New York better than those in Dublin. Population movements are part of the history of the place and of rural Ireland in general.

Placenames reveal so much about population movements. A mile up this road, as you walk west away from the Twelve Pins, comes the townland of Coogla. This is the anglicised version of the original name Cuaige Uladh, meaning people of Ulster, which referred to families uprooted from Ulster during the plantations, driven off their land and resettled west of the Shannon by Cromwell’s forces.

The Ulster people stayed together in this little area, accounting for the popularity of the Ulster surname O’Donnell in this part of deepest Connaught.

Population movement, whether voluntary or forced, is the history of humanity. Most Dubs have country relations and few of us are more than two generations from the farm on at least one side. This is because Ireland did not industrialise in the 19th century. In fact, up to the 1950s, only Belfast possessed a proper urban industrial class.

The rest of Ireland was agricultural. Industry here was what could be termed “beer and biscuit” industry, characterised by employers such as Guinness and Jacobs. As a result of being close to the countryside, of having a family memory of a farm, most suburban Irish people listen when rural Ireland cries for help.

You don’t need to be in the wilds of Connemara to know that there is a problem in rural Ireland. Critically, rural Ireland feels that it is under threat. I say “feels” because the numbers are not too convincing when it comes to whether there is a crisis in rural Ireland. Crude economic data tells us that the population of every county is rising, not falling. In addition, tax data tells us that Dublin generates by far the most tax revenue and redistributes billions to the rest of the country. Dublin is, in a sense, looking after the rest of the country.

Such “facts” often lead people to dismiss concerns about rural anxiety, dismissing it as, at best, dewy-eyed nostalgia and, at worst, cynical vote and cash gathering. But when people “feel” something, that something is real. Cold numbers rarely give us the complete picture. And, as statistics tend to have an agenda, they can be deployed to bolster a pre-ordained position.

Depopulation

If people in rural towns are telling us those towns are dying, if people out in the townlands are claiming that they can’t field a full GAA team, if schools are amalgamating because of fewer numbers, then depopulation and attendant issues are real.

What matters in economics is not only absolutes, like the absolute level of population or wealth but the contrast with something else.

The contrast between what is happening in rural Ireland and greater Dublin is what concerns people. So too does the contrast between the position of rural Ireland today versus the position in rural Ireland 20 or 30 years ago. The contrast is the key to appreciating the anxiety.

So, for example, although all counties may be experiencing population growth, the age profile is changing dramatically.

The supposed decline of rural Ireland may have less to do with the actual number of people in the countryside, but rather who has remained. In particular, those heralding the death of rural Ireland may be speculating about the fate of its greying population. This is a huge contrast.

Rural Ireland is predominantly older than the rest of the country. Young people are leaving in droves as education levels rise, while retired people are selling up in the city and re-migrating back home. This might keep absolute population levels growing, but the place feels very different.

Moreover, this fact is borne out by the old age dependency ratio – the ratio of older dependents to the working-age population. In 2016, the top two counties with the highest old age dependency ratios were Mayo (28.3) and Leitrim (27.4). The counties with the lowest old age dependency ratios were Fingal (13.8) and Kildare (15).

Ultimately, we will never stop migration. Moving from home is an individual act of self-transformation. When you leave your small place and head to the city, you are saying to yourself and everyone else that you are actively changing who you are and becoming a different sort of person. This is the type of personal ambition that makes the world go round.

Decentralisation of the public service gets a bad rap

What we can do is make other Irish cities attractive, by public investment in infrastructure where necessary, by making housing much, much cheaper in other cities and by relocating public administration out of Dublin and into other cities. This gives the rest of the country a better sense that its concerns are being heard.

Decentralisation of the public service gets a bad rap because of the debacle 15 years ago; however, it is clear – with Dublin overheating and other areas of the country either depopulating or growing far more slowly – that moving parts of the public service is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Rural Ireland is beautiful, but it has to be a living ecosystem and that ecosystem has to be nourished from the centre.

Analysis

Fintan O’Toole: ‘Rural Ireland’ has been romanticised up to its neck

David McWilliams: We need to move public servants out of Dublin

Challenges facing rural Ireland’s needs centralised decision-making

Two-thirds of towns with 10,000 people are in Leinster

Immigration is as much a rural phenomenon as an urban one

The stark problem for Irish towns is simple: they need people