Fine Gael has stolen a march on the Coalition Government by designating eight new growth centres in the State that may become modern cities over the next ten years. Of course there was an element of opportunism in the decision by the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, to announce details of his party's plans for large urban growth centres. But there was also a measure of leadership and of political courage that has been sadly lacking in the Government's approach to the issue.
There was a design flaw at the heart of the National Development Plan, 2000-2006, published by the Government last winter. It failed to identify the secondary growth centres around which development will take place. Much was made of the proposed expenditure of huge amounts of Exchequer and EU funding on infrastructural projects for the newly created Border, Midland and West region and for the Southern and Eastern region. A broad outline of a variety of transport developments was provided, along with planned expenditure for water and sewage services, for tourism, education, health and telecommunications. But the Government's courage failed when it came to advocating the growth of specific towns. Instead it gave the Department of the Environment two years in which to prepare a national spatial strategy that will inform industrial, residential and rural development in the regions over the nest twenty years.
It was a political cop-out. There was an unwillingness to designate high-growth towns in case this would generate a backlash from less favoured urban centres. The result is that economic development will continue on an ad hoc basis within the regions for at least the next two years, largely driven by speculative investment. Not only that, key Government decisions will take place in a planning vacuum. By the end of this month, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, is due to complete his consultations with Cabinet colleagues over a major decentralisation programme. Decisions on relocating 10,000 civil servants to a range of towns and cities around the State will be taken. But without a spatial strategy as guide. In much the same vein, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, will announce details of a £1,000 million water and sewage investment programme next week that will allow for future industrial and residential development.
Nobody would quibble with the need for a 20-year, national spatial strategy. But the National Plan should have provided some initial guidance for planners and developers. It was easy to identify the major industrial centres of Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway and Waterford as "regional gateways". But, having recognised that "a number of medium-sized towns have emerged, below the level of the regional gateway, as major county/local hubs for economic growth, supporting the development of smaller towns and villages and rural areas", the Plan declined to name them. This, in spite of the fact that investment in these unidentified towns was regarded as the key to spreading economic development. Fine Gael has gone some way towards filling that gap by nominating Letterkenny, Kilkenny, Sligo, Castlebar, Athlone, Portlaoise, Dundalk and Tralee as its favoured growth centres.