The issue of the regional imbalance in Ireland is a major concern to each Member of this House. The current situation, where a major portion of the population lives and works in one city while at the same time there is increasing rural depopulation, is neither viable, practical nor sustainable. Due to the recent rapid pace of economic growth, bottlenecks and other signs of pressure on capacity are becoming evident in faster growing regions of the country while others are lagging behind in terms of growth performance. We are left with a situation where there are two sets of problems in urban and rural Ireland.