Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a Teachta Dála based in Newbridge, I am delighted to have the opportunity to get involved in this discussion. I was going to use Athy as an example to try to tease out the places Dr. Hughes is thinking about. I thank him for his presentation, which I found hugely interesting, but I cannot let the Naas-Newbridge comparison go. Newbridge has definitely passed out Naas as a retail town, and I think some of the reasons for this are down to planning decisions. A very large Tesco complex on the edge of Naas town was given planning permission, which has effectively caused the town centre to die. This coincided with a town centre development not going ahead because of the recession. It was the perfect storm. There are perfectly viable businesses in the heart of Naas town now closing, with business moving out to the shopping centre because of more footfall. I think this is largely a planning decision.

I would not say Naas is dying on its feet. Retailers are very negative, but there are many positives in Naas, and Kerry Group was a huge one. Naas basically fought off competition from Amsterdam and London to win that business, and Kildare County Council did very well in playing its part in helping to secure it. When one talks to senior management in Kerry Group, one hears that one of their main reasons for locating in Naas and not Dublin, London or Amsterdam was the quality of life for their staff and the staff's ability to afford housing in the area and send their children to school in the area. Senior management's view is that if their staff are happy and the company is able to attract and retain good staff, it is very positive for them, which I thought was an interesting insight.

The whole middle of Kildare has benefited from 900 jobs coming into the Naas area, but this has also brought its challenges, specifically the increased housing demand that comes with an increase in employment opportunities. I take Dr. Hughes's point that Sallins and similar towns on the edge of Naas have grown exponentially and that Newbridge does not have the same pull out of it. Interestingly, Kildare County Council's long-term master plan is for the population of Naas to increase from 22,000 at present to 50,000 and for the population of Newbridge, at present 23,000, to increase to 25,000. If this plan remains the same, we will see that change continue into the future.

I wish to use the example of Athy, further south in south Kildare and still an hour from Dublin. There is a perception of Kildare as being affluent all over. When people from outside Kildare meet a person they discover is from Kildare, they ask him or her whether he or she owns a racehorse. They believe everyone in Kildare owns a racehorse, works for Intel or Pfizer or is a big farmer. This perception poses huge challenges for us as a county. Like everywhere else, we have our pockets of deprivation. Those pockets of deprivation tend not to get looked after as well as other areas that are perhaps better recognised as being deprived. Leixlip and Athy, in the very south of our county, are worlds apart, yet when it comes to making decisions as to how much Leader funding Kildare gets, the county is bundled up all together, which is a challenge. This was very much evident when the Minister, Deputy Bruton, and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation a few years ago extended the regional aid map ever so slightly and Athy was one of the three towns included in the extension. This was a recognition that there was difficulty attracting business there. However, the town has recently undergone regeneration.

What I am interested to find out is what our aspiration as people who have responsibility for trying to manage Athy should be in the context of what Dr. Hughes says. I do not disagree that key cities can be drivers of economic growth. Athy is an hour south of Dublin, was a thriving market town for years and was home to enterprises such as Minch Malt and Batchelors peas for years. The main industry in the town of Athy was predicated on the fact that it is surrounded by some of the best agricultural land in the country. This has fallen away now. We do not have that same level of employment in the area. Should the aspiration of Athy be simply that people will work in Dublin or nearby or for Kerry Group and it is hoped they will live in Athy and commute back and forth? Are we wrong to want our own industry and enterprise in the town?

As part of a regeneration project, we have undertaken a survey of the town. Some of the demographics in Athy are very challenging for a variety of reasons. We have worryingly high youth unemployment, and the extent of employment in the area is probably a little more negative than it would be in other towns. In doing the survey, we found out something that surprised us: there are 900 people in a town of 9,500 basically sleeping in Athy but going up and down to Dublin or elsewhere to work. We are trying to ascertain exactly what kinds of skills they have. This could then allow us to sell the story to multinationals or other industry that we have this talent pool here that does not want to be travelling up and down the road or the railway and would prefer to work in the Athy area. What should our aspiration be in this regard? What does Dr. Hughes envisage for regional towns with population sizes of 10,000 or perhaps 5,000 that are not a million miles away from a big city? Obviously, it comes down to quality of life; it is not just about population. While it is interesting to see that Athy's population is decreasing, this does not really tell us much because if the whole population is travelling, its quality of life is not the same. What I have personally seen happen in the town is that, of those 900, those who are likely to get involved in the local community are those who have children. This is the same for Kildare town or any of the commuter towns. Once one has children in a school, one gets to know other parents, one's kids go to play in the local GAA or soccer club, one gets to meet other people and one gets involved in the local community centre. The double-income, no-kids couples who are working hard to pay off their mortgages probably do not have that same attraction. If they are originally from Dublin, they tend to go back to Dublin to socialise at the weekends and do not ingratiate themselves with the community at all. This is not what we want to build in our towns, specifically our regional towns. I am considering the matter more in the societal context than just the economic context. We want to make sure our towns are live, living communities because that is where the support will be.

As our population ages, we will need that level of support and that everyone would know their neighbours.