The Irish Times view on rural Ireland: a focused strategy is needed

As the tourism season winds down and the nights draw in, the inhabitants of rural Ireland once again confront the downside of being one of the most dispersed communities in Europe.

In broad terms rural Ireland is relatively densely populated, particularly when compared to the likes of Finland or Sweden. But its denizens are far more widely spread out as a consequence of historic settlement patterns which eschewed towns and villages for isolated homesteads.

This may account for some of the attractiveness of the Irish countryside but the consequences in terms of the provision of services, connectivity and community cohesion are obvious.

Our Rural Future, Rural Development Policy 2026-2031, the five-year strategy launched by the Government this week, aims to address these deficits by building on the previous plan, which bore the same name and ran from 2021 to 2025.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin credited the previous plan, in part at least, with the connection of half a million homes to broadband, along with better transport and more jobs.

It is debatable whether these gains would have happened without the previous five-year plan. They were. for the most part, consequences of pre-existing government policy.

The national broadband plan, for example, predated the 2021-2025 programme and money for rural broadband was already committed. Likewise various rural development schemes were also in existence, as was Enterprise Ireland’s focus on creating jobs outside of Dublin.

The Local Link bus service also predated the plan But its significant expansion, which was highlighted by the Taoiseach, must be acknowledged, along with the focus on creating hubs and infrastructure for remote working. It cannot be said either would have happened anyway.

The decision to renew the policy approach for another five years comes after an independent review of the previous plan carried out for the Government by the OECD. It concluded that while many of the initiatives might have happened anyway, the collective was worth more than the sum of its parts.

The OECD acknowledged that the “whole of government” approach brought benefits, not least putting an end to the belief that rural policy was an adjunct to agricultural policy. It has recommended greater use of evidence in policy-making along with more focus on enterprise and the delivery of services.

The OECD recommendations are reflected in the new programme and it is now up to Minister for Rural Affairs Dara Calleary and Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke to find and unlock the additional value of a focused, cross-government effort to address the continuing imbalance in resources between rural and urban Ireland.

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