EVERY day we hear how the information revolution will change our lives, eliminate the disadvantages of living far away from big urban centres and plug us all in to the world wide web. Not necessarily, according to the chief executive officer of the Western Development Partnership Board, Mr John Higgins.
A delegation from the board will meet officials from the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications later today to discuss the Department's views on its £200 million action plan to "save the west". A key point the delegation will make is that unless the Government acts now peripheral regions will remain isolated by the time the revolution is complete.
He cites as an example Telecom Eireann's ambitious plan to wire up an entire town for the new era, by providing every home, business and public office in it with a phone, a digital mailbox, high speed access to the Internet and high quality ISDN lines.
The idea is to create "a test bed and prototype of what a town can be in the information age", according to Telecom, and show how distance from the centre is no longer an obstacle to development.
A spokeswoman said a competition would decide the town. Details will be announced at the end of the month.
"The winning entry will have a community that is passionate and Very focused on what it sees as the employment and lifestyle benefits the information age will bring to its citizens," she said.
The project should be up and running early next year at a cost of about £10 million. This estimate will depend on the size of the town and the amount of outside sponsorship Telecom manages to secure.
As it stands, however, the project carries a big label which reads: "No small towns need apply." Only those with a population of 10,000 to 30,000 will be invited to compete for the lucky break - unless Telecom can be persuaded to change its mind.
"In our opinion that straightaway defeats the purpose, says Mr Higgins. "Here's Telecom Eireann, setting up a situation where it says time and distance doesn't matter, and suddenly it's saying it has to be a population of 10,000. Why couldn't it pick three towns of 3,000 and really do something for those towns and prove the point? That's just typical of the lack of thought in relation to the dispersal of development."
No doubt there will be howls of anguish in Clifden, Boyle, Tobercurry, Ballyshannon and Kilrush when they read this news.
None of these towns will be eligible. Worse - if you go by the book and define a town by its urban district population - there will be much larger centres like Ballinasloe, Castlebar or Letterkenny.
The story is a parable of how the permanent Government is reacting to the western board's action plan, enthusiastically endorsed by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, when he launched it last May.
Since then, the board has met various Departments to get their response to the plan. "I can't say there's much joy out of the answers we're getting," says Mr Higgins. "But at least we're finding out what is causing the blockages."
The plan's key themes are the empowerment of local communities and sustained, planned action over a 20 year timespan "to level the playing field in economic and social development" between east and west. It covers Connacht and counties Donegal and Clare and grew out of the western bishops' development initiative four years ago.
It has been adopted by Government and stresses at every turn the importance of considering regional issues whenever development priorities are drawn up. Yet a key policy document on the information society, drawn up by an inter departmental group and almost ready for publication, does not include a submission from the board.
It is hoped the document will discuss the danger that as telecommunications are deregulated companies will come in and "cherrypick" lucrative urban markets, offering them enhanced telecoms services while ignoring the rest of the country.
IF THAT happens, says Mr Higgins, rural areas will be left with a telecoms infrastructure that cannot cope with the more sophisticated and quicker data transmission services which will be developed over the next few years - in effect, leaving them with voice only services and knocking them off the information superhighway.
"In other words, what we have, we hold. But what we have will be obsolete within the next four to five years, with the pace of change in technology," he says.
There are already big differences in the infrastructure, depending on location, as this correspondent discovered recently on a news assignment in Connemara. A report which could be filed with ease from a computer in Galway city proved more problematic from Baile na hAbhann, site of a high tech television station. Simply put, the telephone line in Connemara was too slow for The Irish Times computer in bead office in Dublin. Perhaps they weren't speaking the same language.
There are also problems with conventional highways, and the way in which EU funds are spent to upgrade them. The cohesion fund, introduced under the Maastricht Treaty, helps four member states (Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal) to prepare for economic and monetary union by funding environmental and transport projects. The aim is to create greater "cohesion" between rich and poor parts of the EU.
But a discussion paper the board prepared says less than 10 per cent of the £1,000 million of cohesion funds allocated for improvements to the State's national roads between 1994 and 1999 will be spent on roads in the west. That's less than 10 per cent for 20 per cent of the population.
A few years ago the Sawdoctors had a big hit with a song about an emigrant who wished he was "back on the N17/stone walls and the grass is green". It evoked a particularly powerful response in Charlestown, Claremorris and Tuam, towns along the N17 where emigration - or migration to Dublin - remains a part of life.
It is ironic, then, that the N17 is one of the roads which is not due to receive any cohesion spending over the five year period. Other roads left out include three important cross Border routes in the north west: the N16 from Sligo to Enniskillen, the N13 from Letterkenny to Derry, and the N14 from Letterkenny to Strabane.
UNDER present rules, cohesion funding is directed at projects of £100 million or more. Once approved, the entire cost of a project comes out of the cohesion fund. This policy discriminates against the west and defeats the fund's purpose. "It rules out most projects which are in the very regions which most need development," says Mr Higgins.
The board has asked the Government to go back to Brussels "and insist that intra regional differences be accommodated, that the principle of cohesiveness be maintained, and that this stupid rule in relation to £100 million should not apply.
"I'm told, unofficially, that if you talk about a tunnel under the Liffey, or a bridge over the Lee - fine. But don't come to us on the Knock Claremorris bypass. That won't get cohesion funds.
"In other words, the very projects that need the 100 per cent funding can't get it. We're straight away excluded from half the funding for roads because there's no project over £100 million."