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Gerry Reynolds MCC

Townlands!.       Those local areas that are the heart, the soul of rural communities. For rural folk, saying that a townland has no people in it is about as absurd as saying that no-one lives in a town. Yet that is exactly what we have in Leitrim. One hundred townlands, empty. Communities that have simply died out. No schools, shops, churches. Nothing. Where the only place that the only local names are found is on the gravestones.

Yes, Leitrim in 2002. A County where most graduates have to go to Dublin to get jobs. Where a primary school in Glenfarre, which in 1970 had eight teachers, now has three. And if An Post gets its way, North Leitrim could well have thirty-five of its post offices closed down.

Remember those facts the next time you read in the Irish Times of An Taisce complaining that Leitrim's planning officials want to change planning restrictions to encourage local people build local homes in their dwindling local communities. For An Taisce, it is all a matter of style; wrong houses, wrong type of windows, wrong locations. But for us in Leitrim, is isn't about style, its about survival.

The survival of communities where there aren't enough young people to fill a football team. Indeed where there aren't enough people of any age to fill a football team. Try telling them why the planners are telling their sons and daughters they can't build a home locally. Cromwell once said 'to hell or to Connacht.' Today, our planning restrictions say 'to Sligo town, Dublin,
anywhere. You're not building in rural Leitrim.'

Yet if those local communities don't get young people staying there, what will the result be? Without young blood, entire townlands will become collective old folk's homes. The schools won't have the numbers. One teacher will go. Two teachers. Then the school. Local shops, robbed of the money that young people would bring, will close. So will local businesses. The
result will be a downward spiral. You might as well hang a sign up; closed. It'll be like going back to the 1950s, maybe the 1850s. Then people emigrated because they had to. Now they are emigrating, abroad or to somewhere else at home, because they have to. Because planners won't allow them to build homes in their own communities.

The irony is that An Taisce, for all their anti-rural bias, have a point. Ireland has suffered from bad development. Vast rows of linear development houses scar beauty spots. We have Southforks on the Shannon. Much of what we have built elsewhere in Ireland is poor quality, environmentally disastrous
and badly located.

No-one with any sense wants that in Leitrim. And that's the irony. For the need to develop Leitrim offers Ireland a chance, perhaps its last chance, to get the balance right. There is no reason why single homes in the countryside need scar the landscape. Not if proper planning is enforced. Let
me make a suggestion. Yes prohibit bad planning. But also reward good design. Give people tax breaks if they use house designs that fit the location, that minimize visual impact in sensitive areas. Give grants for high quality landscaping. And encourage people to use environmentally friendly puraflow systems rather than the outdated and unreliable sceptic
tanks.

In other words, make Leitrim the model by which good development can be judged. Encourage quality, prevent slipshod, haphazard development. That should be what our planning rules are about, not driving the young from their communities because no-one is allowed to build. Help development complement, not clash with, the environment. And the added benefit of a
growing population in Leitrim would be a growth in services (shops, roads, communication) that would help our tourist industry to develop. The result?
Jobs. A vibrant economy. Hope.

Leitrim needs its young people to live in its rural communities if those communities are to have a future. Keeping the present 'you can't build anywhere' policies is destroying Leitrim. For Leitrim cannot just be one big empty park, full of wonderful views but no people. We have a choice.
Develop or die.
If we don't change, and quick, all we will be doing is killing
Leitrim. Death by a thousand planning refusals. And even An Taisce can'tThe brain drain. Words we have all heard. People emigrating to London, Boston, New York. Of course, people believe that with the arrival of the Celtic Tiger, those days were over. And perhaps they were, if you lived in the east or the south of the country. But not if you live in the west. For here, the brain drain continues. Not simply to Boston or New York. But to Dublin and the East coast. (76) The figures speak for themselves. In 1998, with the Celtic Tiger rampant, 21.3 per cent of new Sligo graduates got their first job in Sligo. 43.3 per cent in Dublin. In Leitrim Only 7.4% got their first job in their native county, while 48%, almost one in every two, got their first job in Dublin. This brain drain, the loss of the best, the brightest, hits the regional economy of Connacht hard. Net industrial output in Sligo rose by 11.1% between 1991 and 1998. In Leitrim, it was 6.7%. Contrast that with an average 14.7% in the east region, 17.5 in the south. (97) So we have a problem. Why? Because the west is being left behind structurally. Our infrastructure, road, rail, air, is poor and deteriorating. In the high tech world, we are stuck with poor broadband facilities. All of which means that industries which need good infrastructure, don't come to Connacht in enough numbers. They go to the east, the south. The jobs go there. Our young peoplem go after them. And our economy suffers.(69) The solution is obvious. Targeted investment. We need to get the sort of resources pumped in that will allow us to compete on an even pitch with the rest of the country. That means a balanced regional policy that understands the different needs of different regions. That is why, for example, Fine Gael believes there must be a full cabinet minister for Regional Development. Someone who can strike the right national balance in the provision of resources, not be east-coast focused. (70) First, we need a regional education policy that enables western young people to stay in the west. Dan Flinter of Forfas has said that the last of proper third level facilities in the west is one of our biggest problems. For with third level facilities comes research and development links with business. The result is jobs. To help generate local research and development, we need west-based third level institution, linked to the existing colleges in Enniskillen, Letterkenny and Sligo. Tied in, we need to update our infrastructure, both physical and technical, to get those employers. If we get them, we get jobs, which keeps our young people at home, where we all benefit financially, economically and as a society by their presence.(118)
The solutions may not be simple. But they are obvious. Proper co-ordinated development can make the western economy as vibrant as the rest of the country. And that will benefit everyone. There is no reason why the west cannot, with a proper co-ordinated regional and investment policy, double its population, in the process taking the pressure of an overloaded, overheating eastern region.

Do that and everyone benefits.