TWO figures from the preliminary Census results say much about the challenges ahead for Ireland.
opulation increased by 7.6pc since 2016. Housing stock increased by 6pc.
Nobody needs to be told there is an existing housing shortage but these figures tell us that it is not going to ease any time soon.
But it shouldn’t take daily tales of disappointment from hope-dashed home-seekers, or even the latest census figures, to highlight the problem because we’ve been heading this way for a long time.
Much of the interest in the new population figures comes from the fact that we’ve broken the five-million barrier for the first time in 170 years, and we now have the highest population since before the Famine in 1841.
Arguably a more interesting comparison is a far more recent one. Our population in 2002 was just over 3.9 million. We’ve grown by 30pc in only 20 years.
There were enough bright sparks back then to foresee that population growth was a trend, and to understand it would bring challenges.
With most of the growth in the east of the country, and in a small cluster of counties in and around Dublin at that, the National Spatial Strategy was drawn up.
It would encourage more evenly balanced development and growth across the country, bringing with it thriving, prosperous, attractive, well-serviced, well-connected regional cities and provincial towns without the intense competition for housing that drives unaffordable prices.
Failure to implement that strategy means that 20 years on, despite the welcome news that every county has had some population growth when several lost numbers in the last census, growth is once again concentrated in the east.
Once again, we’re talking about rejuvenating provincial towns, with rural regeneration funds and town-centre-first policies and ambitious regional and rural transport plans, that would together encourage more evenly balanced development and growth and so on.
It’s not just housing that is failing to keep pace with population or with the geography of population growth.
Many areas have a shortage of school places, almost everywhere has a shortage of childcare places, hospitals such as University Hospital Limerick are so overcrowded that a crisis unit has been deployed to do, well, who knows what?
An expansion plan was devised for the hospital some time back with the number of extra beds needed to cope with existing and future demand set out, but they were not all delivered.
Elsewhere, there are so few medical specialists and hospital consultants per head of population that children with chronic conditions will be grown-ups by the time they get their first appointment.
It’s as if policymakers don’t believe the numbers in front of them, as if they’re still psychologically stuck in the 1840s, the 1950s or the 1980s when Ireland was a country of emigration.
It wasn’t deemed necessary to plan for people to stay then nor, sadly, did it seem worthwhile to try to entice them to come back.
There’s a certain apathy around population growth even among those who would see the numbers of their own profession grow if they properly acknowledged the trend.
Ten years ago, five of the then 40 Dáil constituencies had more than 30,000 people per TD – an unconstitutional ratio that requires for seats to be created.
In 2016, that rose to 25 constituencies and now we’re told it’s 38 of the 39 constituencies.
If it isn’t shortages in housing, hospitals or childcare that gets politicians thinking and planning ahead, maybe a few more seats in their own house will.
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