We're sleepwalking into rural decimation

As you drive through Moygownagh, the sight of Mitchell’s shop shut in the middle of the village is a sad and sobering vista. It reminds you of how that village and so many of its ilk throughout Mayo and all along the western seaboard are on their knees.

How many death knells do we need to hear before we act? Have we not yet heard enough?

The closure of Mitchell’s is a movie we’ve seen before, sadly. Countless shops, post offices, pubs, schools and garda stations have closed throughout rural Mayo – and rural Ireland – in the last generation. There may be individual factors in each particular instance but one overriding reality we cannot ignore – population decline.

There are two sides to this which need to be assessed and addressed if anything is going to change. There is urbanisation and, at a macro level, the relatively poor economic health of our region.

Urbanisation is having a massive impact on rural communities and accelerating rural depopulation. Planning and spatial strategies are encouraging urban living to the cost of rural villages and parishes. From a spatial strategy point of view, we need to change the outlook if we want to arrest the slide and make villages more viable. Often it may not take a lot to tip the balance. A 20 or 30 estate in a village can have a transformative effect for the future of that village, compared to just one more estate in reams of such estates in a Ballina, a Castlebar, a Westport or a Claremorris.

Perhaps this can be through social housing or the incentivising of private housing estates in rural areas. The how is up for debate, the key is if the will is there at central government level.

As you travel throughout our county, you realise the real proud sense of identity and belonging that comes from every corner of Mayo, every rural outpost. It is something people treasure and it is something we should not aimlessly let slip away. These villages, like Moygownagh, are crying out for help. It appears to be falling on deaf ears.

The second side of all of this is on a more macro economic level. In EU classifications, we are in a lagging region in the North-Western region of Ireland (Connacht and the three Ulster counties in the Republic of Ireland). There is so much that needs to be done about that at national level in this country. We’re all familiar with the line from Dublin to Galway and the difference in economic prosperity and growth south of that line compared to north of that line.

But even within this ‘lagging’ region, there are massive deviations. The difference in the dynamic between south Mayo and north Mayo is vast. Ballinrobe saw its population grow from 1991-2016 by 127%. Crossmolina, meanwhile, went the other way, with a fall of 13%.

GAA clubs around Castlebar are not struggling for numbers, they’re almost all thriving. The same cannot be said of many clubs in the hinterland of Ballina. The reality is that the health of the GAA clubs is a microcosm of the population figures at play.

Castlebar and Galway serves as a much better attractor to employment, infrastructure and, by extension, population growth than Ballina and Sligo do.

You can see this in technicolour through six North Mayo GAA clubs that operate in the area between Ballina and Crossmolina and north from there to Downpatrick Head, east across to Killala Bay and westwards to the parishes of Kiltane and Cill Chomáin in Erris.

Ardagh, Moygownagh, Kilfian, Killala, Lacken and Ballycastle are each based in their own parish and have been very viable clubs at different points in their existence in the past generation or two but for them, the struggle has become more and more pronounced with the passing of time.

All six used to be able to operate independently at both underage and adult grade. Ardagh and Moygownagh are now amalgamated at underage. They amalgamated at adult level too in 2009 but that was short-lived. Poor management of the proposal by the Mayo GAA Board saw both go out on their own again. They want it to stay that way for as long as possible but when you look at the the population decline in the local schools, you fear it is only a matter of time before they have to amalgamate across the board.

In 2000, Killala, Kilfian and Lacken saw the writing on the wall at underage and came together as the Round Towers amalgamation. Ballycastle tried valiantly to plough their own furrow for as long as possible but they often ended up not being able to field. In 2009, they joined Round Towers and the amalgamation was changed to Naomh Padraig.

That is some transformation for the worse when you consider each of these four parishes were once able to field their own teams at underage and now all that is viable is an amalgamation of the four of them.

It takes a bit longer for the impact to trickle to the adult grade. Fellas might move away after college but the grá for home often sees them home at weekends to line out for their club. Ballycastle regularly flew lads home from the UK en route to winning a county Junior B title in 2015.

But gradually, the numbers catch up. Lacken and Kilfian became weak and were struggling to field. They shipped some heavy defeats and so the writing was on the wall. They banded together last year as Northern Gaels and have become a much more viable entity. It is hard to see either club being able to go back on their own.

This is going to happen in more and more places. There are football reasons for this – some lads may not be as inclined to stick around if their club is struggling. But make no doubt about it, so much of it comes down to numbers. People raised in rural parishes in this county all too often have to leave home for work and, though the desire to return home is there among many of them, economic realities forbid it.

You can get lots of supports in rural Ireland for very worthwhile developments. You can get supports for infrastructure in your sports club. Mayo is full of clubs that have benefitted enormously from sports capital grants. You can get funding for amenities like playgrounds. Again, Mayo is dotted with playgrounds in so many villages. You can get funding for so many projects that can benefit your community and the people living there. But you have to say, as vital as all of these supports are, they will become worthless without the people there to live in the communities and make them not just vibrant but viable.

We are sleepwalking into not rural depopulation but rural decimation. When will we wake up to it?