IF ASKED to pinpoint the centre of Dublin, most people would venture some point along the axis between O'Connell Street and Stephen's Green, perhaps settling under pressure for somewhere around College Green. Scrutiny of a street map, however, shows the layout the streets resemble the rings of a severed tree trunk, but converge about a mile to the non of where you'd expect at a place most people, including most Dublin people, hardly ever go.
The true centre of Dublin is immediately north and west of the Four Courts, taking in Smithfield, Grangegorman, Stoneybatter and northwards to Phibsboro.
This area is beautiful and interesting. There is no obvious reason for its neglect. But over the decades, the city centre has been dragged south eastwards by market convergence. What draws activity towards College Green and beyond has more to do with the ringing of tills than the beating of hearts. As the psychiatrist, Ivor Browne, has said, the true centre of Dublin is a forgotten place in which the society has, as though by tradition, deposited those whom it wishes to forget.
"Virtually everyone in Dublin has heard of St Brendan's, or `The Gorman'," he said once in an interview. "But very few can tell you where it is.
Moreover, that whole section of the city where the hospital is located has been allowed to deteriorate. It is almost as if, were this part of the city to be developed, then people would have to admit that places like Grangegorman or Mountjoy Jail actually exist."
A similar phenomenon now appears to be under way with regard to the country as a whole. The provisional results of this year's census, which show that the national population grew by 30,000 since 1991, have been warmly welcomed by the normalising tendency on the grounds that they indicate emigration has ended and the haemorrhaging of population staunched.
Already, there are signs that the confirmed figures will be used to develop the "Celtic Tiger" fantasy. But closer examination will reveal that they provide a flimsy pretext for such complacency.
Some commentators, perhaps seeking to absolve themselves or others from responsibility for the continuance of the haemorrhaging into the present generation, have utilised the figures selectively.
Dr Garret FitzGerald, for example, writing recently in this newspaper, stated that the provisional figures show "the population of the province of Connacht increased by over 2 per cent, to a level that is now more than 10 per cent above the figure of a quarter of a century ago".
While this is true, it represents an odd choice of extrapolation from the available figures. Dr FitzGerald neglected to remind us that the figure for a quarter of a century ago represented an all time low. He could also have told us that the population of Connacht is still 5 per cent below what it was in 1956, or that it has shown a growth of 1,142 in the past decade.
At an average increase of two persons per week, this is the kind of growth in personnel that an especially boastful proprietor of a medium sized firm might write home about. Dr FitzGerald might equally have chosen to observe that there are 120,000 fewer people living in Connacht today than 70 years ago.
Dr Fitzgerald's casual observation that "only four counties" in the State have registered decreases in population needs to be placed in a specific context which has not to my knowledge been emphasised in any census commentary. Although the census relates to a period of unparalleled economic growth in the country generally, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford and Monaghan have again suffered population declines.
What this shows is that the "black triangle", wherein you might expect to find the heart of Ireland, has been haemorrhaging its population even as the rest of the country appears to have temporarily reversed the trend of decline. It is worth remembering that this happened also during the 1970s - the last previous period of sustained economic and population growth - and that, while some places then achieved significant population increases, the inland counties never succeeded in reversing the trend of a century.
When the 1970s "boom" was over, the decline continued with a vengeance through the 1980s, and would have been much worse had not Connacht maintained a high rate of "natural increase" (mostly due to the number of births) up until 1986, while these figures for the rest of the country were in sharp decline.
There is no evidence that emigration has ended. In reality, the factor of the increased overall population which might be attributable to the return of emigrants is negligible. When the natural increase is removed from the equation, it emerges that there were only 3,185 more people living in the State in 1996 than there were five years ago - a notional return rate of fewer than two people per day.
Moreover, the figures do not reveal the extent to which the haemorrhaging of young Irish people has been camouflaged by the influx of people from the European mainland seeking to enjoy the natural amenities of areas from which the indigenous population is being stripped away.
WHILE this aspect may be difficult to pin down, there is no escaping the continuing ominous pattern of rural decline. What these census figures really tell us is that, despite "unprecedented economic growth", such decline is still happening in most western and midland counties.
While the emerging pattern may call for some refinement of the existing perception of such decline as being primarily a west of the Shannon phenomenon, it most certainly does not justify the complacent response which the figures have received.
The provisional figures seem to indicate that, while the population of coastal areas and major urban centres has increased marginally, a gaping hole is opening in the heart of Ireland, with the eastern counties of Connacht combining with the midland and some northern parts of the Republic in a new ghetto.
Signs are that, having stripped the capital city of its indigenous population, the market is doubling back to gentrify the inner city areas where the society's waste has hitherto been deposited. And so we require a new tiphead for the refuse of progress. The decision to build a prison in my home town, Castlerea - which shows a continuing population decrease - prompts the question: Is this black triangle to be the new human ghetto where we will deposit our society's inconvenient citizens? Is the dark heart of our capital to be matched by an even darker heart in the island's centre?
A country with a dead heart cannot be deemed alive, any more than a collection of joined up houses with a cash register for a soul can be called a living city.