Myths obscure the past and make planning future difficult

I propose to start the new year by challenging the persistence of three enduring popular myths. Two used to be true, but they continue to be widely believed years after they have ceased to have validity: these are the Decline of the West and the Flight from the Land.

The third of my myths, the Inflationary Impact of Decimalisation, was never true, but in the perspective of the impending switch from the pound to the euro, it is nevertheless currently being revived by media people, who should know better.

The latest information on the decline of the west derives from last year's census. The five-year period between 1991 and 1996 included not only three recent Tiger years (1993 to 1996) but also two years of slow growth (1991-1993). Accordingly it can be taken that population trends for the five-year Tiger period 1993-1998 will turn out to be better than these census figures suggest.

What these 1991-1996 figures tell us is that during that five-year period the usually resident population of Connacht rose by almost 8,000, or 2 per cent.

But, it will no doubt be argued, much of this increase took place in Galway, where the population has increased 2 1/2-fold in the past 40 years, by far the fastest growth of any Irish city or town.

So far as the economic and social health of the west is concerned, the growth of urban Galway is not to be dismissed, for this dynamic city has provided substantial employment within the province to many Connacht people who otherwise would have had to move.

Nevertheless, it has been argued that the Galway city figures should be ignored because the real concern is the rural depopulation of the west. So be it. Let us look at the recent population record of the rest of Connacht, outside Galway city.

Between 1991 and 1996 Connacht's rural population increased slightly. It is, however, true that there was a small drop of 1.6 per cent in the number of Connachtborn people in these rural areas which was, however, more than offset by an increase in the number of people who had been born elsewhere. One-third of these immigrants to Connacht had been born elsewhere in Ireland, while of the residual inflow of 4,500 born outside Ireland, some 1,500 of these were the children of Irish emigrants.

Counting these children of returning emigrants as Irish, as we surely must, it becomes clear that the decline in the number of Irish people in the rural part of the province of Connacht in the five years from 1991 to 1996 was little more than 1,000, less than 250 a year. This can hardly be considered a significant decline, and during the overlapping five-year period of rapid growth to next April it has ceased, thus stabilising the population of rural Connacht.

Another kind of scare, about the flight from the land, affecting rural areas of the whole State, has also been raising its head again.

Now, a flight from the land clearly means a drift from agriculture to other occupations. There was, of course, a long period when this happened in Ireland, but that ended many years ago.

We have detailed figures for the composition of our farming community up to 1991. In 1986 there were 121,000 farmers, of whom no fewer than 32 per cent were 60 years old or more. Among the rest of the labour force the proportion who were 60 years or over in 1986 was less than 5 per cent. During the following five years around 10,000 of these farmers died.

The further 10,000 who retired during this period were replaced by a slightly larger number of new farmers, with the result that the drop in the total number of farmers, about 9,000, was less than the number of deaths.

Although no direct information is available on the point, it is evident from the small acreage of agricultural land sold between 1986 and 1991 that almost all of these farmers inherited their farms from parents or other relatives.

In this connection it is worth noting that during this period the number of relatives working on farms aged from the mid-20s upwards declined by some 8,000, of whom about 1,000 were accounted for by the death of elderly relatives helping on farms. A large proportion of the 7,000 survivors of these working relatives would have inherited the farms on which they were helping, while the remaining 4,000-5,000 new farmers must have consisted mainly of farmers' children in other occupations who inherited farms and started to work them. It should perhaps be added that this drop of 8,000 in the number of relatives aged from the mid-20s upwards who had been assisting on farms was offset to the extent of about half by an influx of young people who, having completed their education, were starting to work on their parents' farms.

Of course, the net reduction of 9,000 in the number of farms during this five-year period released land, some 200,000 acres, it would appear, that helped to improve the size of other farms. In fact, between 1986 and 1991 the number of farms of 30 acres or less declined by over a quarter, and the number of farms of over 100 acres increased by about 8 per cent. In this connection it is interesting to note that during this 1986-1991 period, when the purchasing power of the average farm income increased by 30 per cent, one-third of this increase was attributable to the fact that the total farm income was thus being shared among a smaller number of farms. In the five years 1991-1996 there was a further 25 per cent increase in the purchasing power of average farm income, and once again one-third was due to the continuing decline in the number of farms.

Another interesting development in farming in the late 1980s was the sharp increase in women farmers, the number of whom under the age of 65 increased by half within this short five-year period.

My third myth is almost universally believed despite the fact that, in contrast to the other two, it never had any basis. The cost of living was not increased by the introduction of decimalisation in 1971. During the preceding 12 months the consumer price index had been rising by an average of 1.7 per cent per quarter, and in the quarter between November 1970 and February 1971, within which decimalisation took place, it rose by precisely the same amount.

It is perhaps worth adding that if a rounding-up of prices had occurred during the transition to the new currency, this would clearly have had its main impact on items priced in small units, where a rounding-up process would have had most effect.

But if one examines the items that were being sold in units costing 40 old pence or less and which were not subject to seasonal price changes, none of these went up in price by any significant amount between November 1970 and February 1971. Thus tea, sugar, flour and cornflour increased in price by only 0.5 per cent or less during this currency change-over quarter, and bread and processed cheese actually fell fractionally in price.

Is there any hope that our newspapers, television and radio could be persuaded to refrain from continuing to peddle this decimalisation myth as in the period ahead they write and speak about the advent of the euro?