Flight from rural Ireland the biggest crisis facing economy, report warns

THE flight, not just from the land but from rural Ireland by its most educated population, is developing into the single biggest crisis facing the Irish economy over the next two decades.

A new report, Rural Ireland 2025, compiled by an expert group from NUI Maynooth, University College Dublin and Teagasc, warns that Government policy is failing rural Ireland and neither indigenous industry nor the national spatial strategy are capable of halting the current slide.

It also concludes full-time farmers would drop from 40,000 to 10,000 by 2025.

Minister for Agriculture and Food Mary Coughlan rejected those figures.

“I don’t think into the future that way. What I’m saying is that a sustainable support network for full-time farming is what I have in mind and that will be done through many policy initiatives within my own department,” she said after launching the report.

IFA president John Dillon also rejected the figures as too pessimistic.

The compilers of the report stuck to their figures and called for radical action to arrest the decline.

The report recommends “the establishment of a Rural Policy Implementation Group, comprising senior officials from Government departments, development agencies, rural businesses and organisations, to ensure that rural enterprise and employment is effectively integrated into national and regional policies”.

Dr Liam Downey, who together with Patrick Commins coordinated the report, described it as “an early wake-up call”.

Dr Downey said a higher proportion of young people in rural areas complete third level education than in urban areas, but the majority never return to their home areas to work. That was “the most serious problem facing rural Ireland over the coming decades”, he said.