Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is not my area, but I live there and I have a son there. What the witness is discussing is extraordinary information for the future of how we want Ireland to look and how we want to survive post Brexit. Perhaps he would drill down further on this. His theory is that if we put all this into cities such as Galway, Limerick and Waterford, it will have a tentacle effect outside. Perhaps he will elaborate and outline the change that happened between Birr and Edenderry, one of the examples he gave. How did Edenderry survive and Birr retract? His theory falls apart somewhat when one considers Naas, which is dying on its feet, and Portarlington. Saying it falls apart is a little dramatic, but one could question the theory.

I have read guys such as Stiglitz and Krugman. Sometimes when one hears all this talk it sounds great. Tampere is a very good example. What exactly did it do that Cork is not doing? Do not tell me that it lacked a population of 400,000 or 500,000, because I am not sure that is the only reason. I agree with much of what Deputy Ó Cuív says. Rather than distance decay, I think of distance creativity. I would not call it decay. I was in Longford and Roscommon yesterday. It is very good to roll up into a town in the middle of the day to see what is going on by visiting shops and visiting guys who are selling cars, all on personal contract plan, PCP. That is why half the country is driving around in trucks. We all have three or four cars now because we can get them on the never-never at low interest rates.

Longford has a huge population and huge unemployment. I ask Dr. Hughes to go through those three aspects.