The National Economic and Social Council's report on Population Distribution and Economic Development is a salutary reminder that the financial benefits of the "Celtic Tiger" are shared unevenly in our society and are totally withheld in certain disadvantaged areas. Four counties out of 26 - Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan - are identified as areas of decline and deprivation, lacking the large centres of population capable of generating growth and economic innovation and consequently in need of considerable Government investment. Similar, limited areas of gross deprivation are identified within our major cities.
So far, the Government's response to this report has been silence. The manner in which the document was released, on the day after the Dail took holidays and within the Christmas festive season, would suggest no great appetite for its recommendations at either Government or official level. Certainly, the findings appear to conflict with the approach taken by the Government in last month's Budget, when available resources were concentrated on helping those already gainfully employed and particularly those on high incomes. On that occasion, the £20m which had been earmarked by the previous government for anti-drug youth schemes in deprived urban areas was scaled back to £1.3m. And the only gesture made towards Connacht/Ulster involved a capital allowance scheme for hotel refurbishment in the seven counties of Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon and Sligo, excluding the designated seaside resorts.
The NESC report recognises that the competitive advantage now enjoyed by the east and a few other major urban centres owes a great deal to the receipt of European Union structural funds which facilitated the creation in those areas of a modern commercial infrastructure. And it accepts that the most deprived areas of the West failed to benefit from these financial transfers. In those circumstances, it is now open to the Government - as it continues to use the deprivation of the western counties as justification for a Statewide retention of Objective One structural funds status in Brussels - to embark upon a policy of financial transfers and positive discrimination in favour of the most deprived areas. If the concept of structural transfers is valid at European level, surely it should also operate within the State?
"Saving the West" became a political catch-cry when the late Fr James McDyer campaigned against gross depopulation and economic decline in the mid1960s. And the late John Healy also shouted stop. It is clear from this report that some progress has been made in the intervening period, particularly since the emergence of the "Celtic Tiger", and that counties like Galway, Sligo, Clare, Kerry, Donegal and Monaghan are now off the dangerously ill list. That development is to be heartily welcomed. But it is all the more reason why this Government should attempt to finish the job of rehabilitation in relation to the counties and the communities of Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan as the millennium approaches. A society is only as healthy as its component parts. And if the Ireland of the 21st century is to be truly inclusive, "parity of esteem" and "equality of treatment" are concepts which must transcend all borders.