Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Hughes for his very interesting and compelling presentation. The phrase of "distance decay" that he used earlier on was an interesting one. I live in County Galway and see that physically before me everyday in terms of the economic footprint of Galway city and how the economic power of the city peters out as one goes out to the outer fringes of both east Galway and west Galway. There are what the witness described as the necklace towns of Oranmore, Athenry, Tuam, Gort and Loughrea, and they are all within easily commutable distances of the city.

In fact, the census results a few weeks ago proved that 50% of the working population originates from outside the city. However, in the far reaches of east Galway, in places such as Lawrencetown, Eyrecourt and Kiltormer, there is little or no economic impact from the city. Is it the experience that when the size of a city such as Galway is doubled, the consequent economic footprint widens in terms of a greater economic benefit accruing to towns that were formerly beyond the existing economic footprint? Does the distance decay element decrease as the city increases in size?

John Moran has spoken and written extensively on my second question. If we are to prioritise investment in the future on trying to create an economic counterpoint to Dublin city and its unstoppable growth, which is quite apparent now, a huge opportunity exists in developing Galway and Limerick cities as a single urban conurbation. There are many reasons that it would work. First, there are Galway port and Foynes, both of which offer huge opportunities for development in the future. There is also Shannon Airport, whose existing infrastructure is not capitalised upon to any great extent. In Limerick city and Galway city there are incredibly successful third level institutions. If we are deadly serious about developing these powerful counterpoints to Dublin and the Dublin-Belfast conurbation, as Dr. Hughes described it, we must focus on Galway-Limerick as a genuine opportunity to develop a single city in the future. What are Dr. Hughes's thought on that? What type of investment would be required to make that happen?

I understand Deputy Ó Cuív's argument to a certain extent, but when one looks at what is happening globally, it is clear that cities are becoming the engines of economic growth and development, almost to the point that cities are competing with other cities across the globe rather than countries competing with other countries. It is becoming a city-centric economic growth model for the future. Is Galway-Limerick realistic and is it a solution? John Moran at one time suggested continuing that conurbation down to Cork and ultimately to Waterford. Will one dilute the possible effect by trying to spread it across a greater part of the country? Is Galway-Limerick enough to make it happen?

Second, all our cities in the past 100 or 150 years have developed economically primarily because they had the infrastructure in place for that to happen. What opportunity, if any, exists to move beyond the cities to the smaller towns and villages and to generate economic growth with digital infrastructure? Is there something happening in the digital area whereby, if we get our broadband infrastructure right nationally and we get the magical minimum of 30 Mbps into every house by the end of 2021 or 2022 and 100 Mbps in other locations, there is an opportunity to move beyond that city-centric economic development model to use digital technology, particularly in the creative space? Is there anything we are not tapping into or ignoring in our rush towards growing our cities? In the past the infrastructure required for economic development was solely located in our cities. With the use of technology, that economic growth model could be migrated to smaller towns and villages. Is that being examined and is it an opportunity for the future?