Dr. Brian Hughes:

The Drogheda City Status Group is in the process of petitioning Government to confirm both this dynamic and expanding settlement as Ireland’s next city, copper-fastening the eastern development corridor and consolidating the socio-political and geo-economic importance of the Dublin-Belfast corridor, post Brexit.

This added value from urban agglomeration is critical to Ireland’s economic future and is essential to its rural future, as increasing revenues generated from the core area are then available to assist the periphery.

This is one of the most important principles of both the disciplines of urban economics and the new economic geography. Thus the home market effect is boosted both by population growth and per capitaincomes. In addition, increasing property values provide a feel-good factor that encourages spending and further rounds of both residential and commercial investment. The resultant four years of Ireland’s sustained economic growth and its employment recovery is not evenly spread, nor is intended to be. The United Nations, the OECD and the World Bank are advocates of what is called "lumpiness" or centripetal agglomeration. This results in city formation and, critically, it is the expanding cities, in turn, that support their regional and rural spheres of influence, as emphatically confirmed in the evidence-base demographics of the Central Statistics Office, CSO, census results.

Accordingly, the idealistic but impracticable principles of balanced regional development, which was the intended as the core driver of the national spatial strategy for 2002 to 2020, have resulted in unintended demographic consequences, aggravated by the faulty selection of some gateway and hub centres. In any even, 23 was far too many for a State that has the population equivalent of greater Manchester. I use this opportunity also to convey my sympathies to the people of that great city. The irony of the failed national spatial strategy was demonstrated with the same number of matching, alternative centres achieving greater population growth in the 2002 to 2016 period than those centres selected.

The second section concerns the national planning framework and the current demographic background. The replacement for the national spatial strategy, Ireland 2040, the national planning framework, proposes to be different. It is intended to have full statutory backing as recommended in the Mahon tribunal and it must achieve prior all-party political agreement. It is intended to be fully aligned with the State’s economic strategy and it is hoped it will be properly resourced to rectify the near-cessation of infrastructural investment over the past decade. It will be managed by way of the three newly established regional assemblies for the east and midlands, the southern regional area and the Border and western regional area.

Given the depth and length of Ireland’s economic collapse with its loss of economic sovereignty and the international bailout, the demographic outcome of the 2016 census was surprisingly benign, especially so against the alarmist political background utterances of 80,000 plus emigrants per annum. The reality, however, in the definitive census results published last month confirms that these outward flows were 87% counterbalanced by inward migration flows. This resulted in the modest net emigration figure of 4,300 per annum for the five years to April 2016. During this period Ireland's population continued to increase by almost 35,000 per annum. These two-way demographic flow volumes are reflective of the offshore location and economic characteristics of this small but dynamic trading nation, one that is endowed with a temperate climate but is still disadvantaged with a "tundra" population density outside of the greater Dublin area and Louth. Likewise, our exports plus imports, expressed in relation to Ireland’s gross domestic product, emphatically confirm the reliance on the high globalisation index rating that this country enjoys and the nature of Ireland’s open trading economy.

The State's population increased by 173,600, with the natural growth of births less deaths figure at 196,100 offset by net outward migration of 22,500, resulting in a creditable State population growth of 3.78% in the five years to April 2016. The net emigration loss represented just 13% of the net gain in population, as I mentioned, occurring at a time of Ireland’s deepest economic and financial crisis and the subsequent, necessary corrective measures. It is now 30 years since Ireland’s population last contracted, when net outward migration was greater than natural growth. Given the profound nature and depth of our recent economic and financial difficulties and the subsequent and sustained recovery, it is unrealistic to expect that Ireland will return to a population loss scenario any time soon. The opposite is likely to be the case with the resumption to net inward migration for the past two years and the reality of continuing world population growth, with its supply-push effect that will require careful managing. Indeed, Ireland will have every cause to celebrate this coming July because in or about that third quarter of 2017, this State will mark its two million growth in population, up by some 71% since the low point of April 1961. Furthermore, for the first time, Ireland’s cities are growing at a faster rate than their surrounding home counties. We have much to be grateful for as to the extent to which our cities are able to buffer what otherwise would have been much more serious emigration outflows, especially from rural Ireland.

Nevertheless, the forthcoming national planning framework must contain combined aligned spatial and economic strategies to address the fact that Ireland’s provincial cities have an average population of just 109,000, which is only 9.3% of Dublin’s city and suburbs. That comparison excludes Dublin’s burgeoning towns, together with its modest rural population.