Ireland’s ‘lagging’ north and west: Is the harsh label justified?

In early October the economist and Irish Times columnist David McWilliams set off in his car to give a talk. Over the next few hours he discovered the abiding truth of heading to Ireland’s northernmost county: getting there is a slog. “Just drove to Donegal,” he noted in a tweet. “The people of Derry, Donegal and the North West really need that motorway.”

Hundreds of replies quickly followed from people living in or bordering those counties, most in broad agreement and many advocating the need to revitalise the once-vibrant rail network in the region. The moment passed but it illuminated long-held frustrations of people living “up there”. And it chimed with a debate that had taken place in the Dáil just a few days earlier, when Galway TD Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath about a European Commission assessment which in September downgraded the western and northern counties of Ireland to a “lagging region”: the only part of Ireland to fall under that category.

The assessment covered seven counties: Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal, Monaghan, Galway, Roscommon and Mayo. It was part of a cohesion policy funding agreement document through which Ireland will receive €1.4 billion for the period 2021-2027. The full report will soon be made available and has been seen by The Irish Times. Its message on the north and west is bleak, reiterating the EC 2020 country report for Ireland, warning that regional disparities in Ireland are among the highest in the EU “and are increasing”.

If left unchecked this “will have a damaging impact on the economic and social wellbeing of all regions in Ireland, particularly rurally-orientated regions such as the northern and western region”. In addition, the European Parliament’s committee on regional development deemed those counties to fall into the “lagging region” category as they face specific challenges in key areas like productivity and educational attainment, “as well as a weaker skills base and business environment”.

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The GDP per head of population had fallen from 82 per cent of the EU average (between 2015 and 2017) to an estimated 71 per cent. It ranked Ireland’s “north and west” as the 177th most competitive region out of the 240 divided across the European Union.

This information circulated during the recent berserk news cycle on British politics and the escalating cost-of-living crisis, so it did not gain much purchase. But it was the latest unpromising depiction of a region of Ireland that has, rightly or wrongly, suffered from a sense of neglect for decades.

“Look it, you are always reluctant to do your own area down or talk it into the ground, but the facts are that the employment opportunities are not here,” says Seamus Duke when we meet one morning in a hotel outside Roscommon town to talk about what the compilation of data and performance trends in Brussels means to and for the people living in the north and west.

“I have four daughters in their 20s, and their chances of opportunity in this area are almost nil. They had to go to Dublin, at best, and abroad for opportunities. We are surviving in Roscommon on a couple of big businesses – Harmac [a medical products manufacturer with headquarters in New York] employs about 400 people in Castlerea. We have no big industry in Roscommon town, a county town, and a busy town. But take [out] the mart, the hospital and the county council and a few businesses, [and] there are no big employers here.”

Duke is a force of nature in Roscommon: a broadcaster and journalist and a former DJ and an unabashed partisan Rossie. He made a memorable appearance on Prime Time during the most vicious gales of the last recession, when the current affairs show did a live outside, night-time broadcast from Athlone, talking about how the counties west and north of the Shannon had been decimated by the downturn and emigration. In an odd way the latest EU categorisation harks back to that recession.

“It is not a surprise,” says Luke McGrath, an economist with the western Development Commission. “We were flagging this two years ago because it is a very technical measure.”

McGrath points out that the relevant counties now fall under a new regional bracketing; that cohesion policy is plotted along seven-year arcs, and the last round of funding was based on the old border-midland-western region. But for the latest round the regions were redrafted into the north and west region.

“It is the first time this region has been classified. So it is not technically a downgrade. Poland and Ireland were the only two countries affected like this. This is more a reflection of reality. It is a historical issue that goes back to a sluggish recovery from the previous recession.”

But it does reflect a broader truth of the data-portrait of the counties involved. “It is related to longer-term structural issues: graduate retention, economic and employment structures,” says McGrath.

“The western region, for example, would have a much greater reliance on public service employment, manufacturing and agriculture compared to the rest of the State. And within the region there is a lower share of employment in those higher-wage knowledge-intensive service sectors: finance, insurance, real estate, science. Within the enterprises we are much more reliant on smaller microenterprises and on self-employment.”

A day trip through the relevant counties will take visitors on a jaunt through towns and villages that are either thriving or stagnant despite being just a short distance apart. Trying to repurpose and reimagine Irish towns that developed to suit 19th and 20th century patterns of life has eluded successive Irish governments – if the will was ever there.

Some towns, like Carrick-on-Shannon, have bloomed as tourist magnets. In 2006, Orlagh Kelly took a leap of faith and set up an independent book shop, The Reading Room, in the heart of the town. She had a career in banking but was always enthusiastic about books and as a child had been fascinated by the lending library run by her grandmother.

“Having lived in cities I felt you don’t need to be in a city to expect excellence in restaurants or shops. I have always had a strong sense that you are as entitled to expect that from me as if I was in a city environment. And ... Carrick is such an attractive town. But it was a giant leap. If I had planned it better I probably wouldn’t have done it. But it was passion that drove me. I knew there was a place for it.”

Since opening the bookshop has weathered the recession, the recovery, and the pandemic. Kelly believes that it is the community ethos in the town which sustains independent businesses. And one light begets another. If someone sees a local business opening it encourages them to act on a similar dream.

“Oh yeah, 100 per cent. I would talk to other businesspeople in the town that are owner-run, and it is about community. Yes, there is an element of transaction involved. But I would sometimes say to Bernie, who works with me: today was just a talkie day. In other words people came in to talk to us. And that makes a huge difference. Winter is quieter here, definitely.

“But I would say it is not necessarily more tourists we are looking for. I would love to see more people come back to live in the area. That is where we have a lack of imagination about the northwest. In terms of lower productivity and educational attainment, I would say that successively, policy after policy and indeed the media, the focus has always been on cities. Even for education you must go to the cities. And that you are somehow lesser if you get an education somewhere else. So, you are encouraged to move out. And because of lack of investment, you are not then encouraged to come back.”

The remote-working revolution, sprang by the pandemic, created a significant exodus from Ireland’s cities to small towns. In Westport local councillor Christy Hyland recently “met a guy on the street who works for an American bank”. The thought tickled him. “If I told that to my father 30 and 40 years ago he’d be telling me to get the tablets. But there is a huge demand now with people leaving Dublin and large congested areas.”

Hyland is adamant that the north and west have been an after-thought when it comes to government policy. “We haven’t had any IDA investment here in Westport for many, many years. Various governments have had opportunities.”

A Tuam man happily domiciled in Mayo, Hyland believes the region has had to fight to keep what it has. He recalls a threat to close the railway service from Claremorris to Westport, which evaporated after local councillors threatened to lie on the rail track. “They fought that battle and won it. Now we have five trains a day. Look at the 4.30pm train that come in on a Friday evening. It is packed.”

Rail transport remains a pressing concern. Over 250 people gathered in Tuam recently to hear Dara Calleary, Minister of State for Enterprise, open a conference organised to advocate for the implementation of phases two and three of the western rail corridor. All local political representatives believe that infrastructure and industry are the key issues in rectifying the regional inequality.

“There is a new appreciation of the countryside,” says Tony Waldron, an Independent county councillor for Roscommon. “People want to live and work in that environment. And it can be very cost-effective for industries. Harmac, for instance, coming to Castlerea [in 1998] is proof that the IDA cannot make the argument that people will not come to work and live in Roscommon.”

Luke McGrath is keen to see the results of data on people who relocated to live and work in the region during and after the pandemic. So far it is anecdotal. In Sligo, the jewellery designer and artist Martina Hamilton has met customers who have moved to the town to live and work remotely since the pandemic. Two family members are planning to return home for retirement. Since opening her shop, The Cat and the Moon, on Castle Street in 1989, she has participated in the evolution of Sligo town and points to the advent of the Atlantic Technological University and the new plaza on Stephen Street as significant recent steps forward.

“There has been a lot of work done to promote our biking tracks and trails, paddling and water sports. There is a high quality of life for everybody. A lot of festivals going. The big pity in places like Sligo is that people are not living over the shops ... I am looking out here now on the third floor at empty windows and that is the big shame, that urban renewal didn’t go further.”

Years ago Hamilton gave a talk about local enterprise and was asked if statistics on population growth had encouraged her to open her business. “I just laughed ... it was more that fools go where angels fear to tread! I just wanted to make my life here and make it work.”

As well as the retail outlet the jewellery manufacturing is in-house and the Hamilton Gallery located upstairs is about to house its latest exhibition, Winter Gathering. She cannot really say if she feels it would be easier to start a creative business now than it was when she opened in 1989.

“That is a hard one to answer because in my first five years nobody would have worked for the income. It took me to move to where I am now to be able to expand. So, there is a scale thing. When you start with nothing you aren’t comparing yourself with anybody. You are just delighted to be able to do it. And that idealism took me a long way.”

The north and west is lit with similar success stories: vibrant independent businesses built on graft and belief and, as Orlagh Kelly discovered over her 16 years, the conspicuous loyalty of returning customers who make it clear that they appreciate the presence of a bookshop. That investment of faith in locality is nothing new. Talk to anyone about what sustains day-to-day life in the north and west and they arrive at the same word.

“Volunteers,” says Seamus Duke.

“I am not sure that the Government fully understands the work that the volunteers do. What goes on here ... the people who really keep places in Roscommon and Leitrim going are volunteers. No doubt about it. The Tidy Towns groups, the tourism groups, amateur dramatics and festivals, the GAA, and sports clubs ... They are keeping rural Ireland going in every community. All those kinds of groups. And sometimes they feel they are getting no help from anybody.”

The reason for David McWilliams’s long drive north was to fulfil an invitation to speak at a conference organised by Atlantic Technological University on exploring the economic and social potential of the north and west. The Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris was the other keynote speaker. The “lagging region” reports coincided with the event.

“I didn’t read much into it this time because I just get annoyed because they [the European Commission] tend to look at it in the context of innovation and educational attainment,” says Paul Hannigan, head of college at ATU Donegal.

“You need to look at it from the full region. The argument that not as many people have educational attainment doesn’t necessarily hold up when you do an analysis of it in terms of the changes that have occurred. If you go back to the 1990s there was about a 75 per cent completion rate of the Leaving Cert here in Donegal. But that has gone up to about 93 per cent now. So there has been a complete culture change in the county in terms of second level, firstly, and a transfer into higher education.

“The county doesn’t get the credit for the people who left and do not come back; it is just people who have found jobs back here. But even that has improved in the last number of years. There has been a strong transfer from ourselves here to local multinationals.”

Hannigan is optimistic that the advent of ATU, creating a multicampus university across Mayo, Sligo, and Donegal after “competing against each other all the time for the past 50 years”, will play a significant part in balancing the regional inequality highlighted by the European Commission. Tourism, enhanced significantly by the Wild Atlantic Way campaign, is gaining ground. But for now the counties are stuck with the unwanted stamp of EU “lagging region”.

“We were a ‘region in transition’ and now we have gone to a ‘lagging region’,” says Hannigan. “That gives a very distinct message. If you look at the deprivation indices, the way they are presented is scary. There is no point in fighting against something to say that everything is rosy in the garden: it is not. But I do think it is important to say that there is a lot more positivity than is recognised in a term like lagging region. The distance and time it can take to travel: that is sometimes what puts people off. But when they get here they are surprised with what they find.”