Re: Re: A Nation at War with its Capital City?
@Frank Taylor wrote:
Give us some examples of this war (apart from the WRC).
I agree with not mis-assigning responsibility for local authority functions. But I think there is a question about assignment of resources which fall to central government. Those decisions do show an anti-Dublin bias which, on occasion, seemed to justify any act of vandalism.
One example is the many botched and costly moves of central government offices to rural locations, for example the Legal Aid Board to Cahirciveen. Also picture the synergies that might have been created if the Garda Training College had been located in a University city instead of Templemore.
Another is the whole area of airport provision. Dublin’s runway was deliberately kept too short to take fully laden cargo aircraft for fear of drawing business away from Shannon. On the other hand, the West coast is dotted with airports as if the expectation is that every town from Charlestown up is capable of being a hub. (Anticipating the ritual ‘tremendous success’ talk about Knock, its necessary to reflect on the extent to which its scheduled flights depend on emigrants visiting folks at home and vice versa. Knock’s ‘success’, such as it is, is ironically a product of the failed county jersey approach to regional development.)
In the area of health services, the actual objective of providing health care takes second place to keeping open underutilised facilities in every county.
To make it clear, I do support that general idea that many here are advocating of a regional policy based on cities. There is a need for the regional cities to clearly join in on this agenda, as so many times they allow the agenda to be seen in Dublin vs the rest terms. We here a lot of local action committees of the ‘save our crap local hospital’ type. We need to here the occasional Cork/Limerick/Galway City voice pointing out that this is just not the best approach for meaningful regional development. Dublin focussed rhetoric litters this type of discussion, and its largely misdirected.
