Can the new government help rural Ireland?

It was one of the best pieces of local journalism I have read in some time.

Liam Heffron’s recent piece, ‘the heart of another community has stopped beating’ in these pages on his own village of Moygownagh was magnificent.

If you want to get a handle on what depopulation is doing to rural communities the length and breadth of the western seaboard of Ireland, then Heffron’s examination of his own village is essential reading.

Heffron lays bare the bleak future facing his beloved Moygownagh and shrewdly dissects how it has got to this stage.

He writes from his lived experience, makes telling observations and gives a very informed commentary.

The reality is that while he focused on his own home turf, Heffron could just as easily have been writing about scores of towns and villages throughout this region that are dying on their feet.

Nowadays there has never been as much noise coming at people and it can be hard to discern the wheat from the chaff but if you are passionate about our county’s future, it is the one piece you need to read.

If you haven’t read it already, you will find it online (simply search for ‘Liam Heffron Moygownagh Western People’ and it should be the first hit on Google).

I shared it on social media myself last week and the level of engagement from Mayo folk all around the world underlined how engaged (and enraged) people are on this topic and how big an issue it ought to be politically, particularly with a new government being formed.

To give you a flavour of the replies:

“Incredible writing that describes the hollowing out of rural Ireland. As someone who currently lives far away, it found a latent hole in my chest that yearns for home,” said former Mayo hurler and footballer Cathal Freeman, now based in Australia.

“Required reading, terrific,” said renowned Irish Examiner journalist Michael Moynihan.

“Really worth a read and relevant to all parts of rural Ireland. Decline in services, closure of commercial or community activity, declining population and lack of any meaningful input for communities in planning their future is very much a ‘live’ issue,” wrote Julie Brosnan in Kerry.

“Marvellous piece about rural depopulation and political centralisation,” wrote respected sportswriter Clíona Foley.

“That’s a superb account of a problem whose roots were decades (of inaction) in the making,” said well-known Waterford-based journalist Dermot Keyes.

“Jesus Christ I’m so angry reading that,” said Bonniconlon’s Cormac O’Malley.

“A great article, echoing many truths of rural Ireland. But there is hope within communities, Belmullet is a thriving town thanks to the hard work of tourism businesses and the local community,” wrote Fiona Meehan-Togher in Belmullet.

“What a read! Sad and infuriating,” said Mulranny native Enda Mulloy, currently domiciled in London.

I could go on and on but you get the picture.

Any time I’ve written on the topic of rural depopulation, I’ve received considerable engagement. It matters deeply to people. It has been discussed at length at Mayo GAA meetings where clubs who have haemorrhaged numbers have pleaded their case and pointed to a bleak future like that portrayed by Liam Heffron for Moygownagh.

There has been a call to action by clubs in Mayo and also by people like Pat Spillane, himself from the small, rural club of Templenoe in South Kerry and in places like Galway and Donegal too.

So why has so little changed? Why has an issue with such huge resonance not led to a dramatic change in approach?

The draft Programme for Government released last week includes a ‘commitment’ to support 50:50 balanced population growth between the Eastern and Midland region, and the Southern and Northern and Western regions combined. How this will look and be attempted remains to be seen.

Based on previous programmes, one cannot be too optimistic. There has been a lot of rhetoric about rural Ireland and a lot of talk but not near enough action.

Even when Mayo’s Michael Ring was made Minister for Rural and Community Development, the role itself was limited in its function. There was a lot of funding for community facilities and making rural villages better places to live. However, no government in the history of this state has afforded the issue the level of funding and priority required to transform rural Ireland and stop the slow and steady slide from viable communities to ghost villages with schools, post offices, shops, pubs all closing simply because there is no longer a critical mass of population there to sustain them.

A laissez faire attitude to regional development has left our cities, particularly Dublin, creaking at the seams. But even in Mayo, we see it in microcosm with the growth of Castlebar and surrounds, likewise in Westport, Ballinrobe and Claremorris while parts of rural north Mayo are dying on their feet. Villages like Moygownagh.

What is it we want for the future? Do we want to continue with growing urbanisation, growing rural depopulation? If so, we should do nothing, sit on our hands and let nature take its course.

But I am convinced that is not the future people want. Hundreds of conversations in recent years has proven to me how many people want to return to their home parishes but can’t. The jobs aren’t there, the housing isn’t there.

We have let market forces dictate where prosperity is in Ireland and that has brought all sorts of ills – a housing crisis in the cities and the withering away of the fabric of rural communities.

We’re one of the most centralised countries in the European Union. Everything radiates in and out of Dublin. As a consequence, our region, the Northern and Western Region, is ‘a lagging region’ in EU terms, doomed by its peripherality in a country consumed by its capital city.

Imagine what a difference a social housing programme with a focus on rural villages would make? Imagine the difference properly incentivised job creation in rural areas could make? Imagine the west of Ireland received even its fair share of infrastructural investment on a pro-rata basis with the east of the country? Let alone positive discrimination to try to fix generations of neglect.

It all comes down to asking what do we want as a country. And if any government that leads us has the bravery and the vision to chart a new direction.