JOHN COMER: Rural-urban imbalance is creating a very lopsided state

We are only beginning to see some recognition at State level of the need for an urgent re-evaluation of the policy that has seen an overwhelming focus on the needs of the Greater Dublin Area and a few other urban centres to the huge cost of the rest of the country and to any semblance of sensible spatial development.

In common with other rural-based organisations, the ICMSA has repeatedly raised highlighted the seemingly inexorable withdrawal of the state and its services ‘inwards and eastwards’ — this is to say, out of rural districts and towards urban/suburban locations with a definite bias towards Dublin and its immediately surrounding counties.

The recent proposed mass closure of rural post offices is just the latest manifestation of this ruinous and shortsighted policy that judges on the most crude current cost-benefit without any idea of adding or upgrading in a way that might lead to more business and footfall. Where the State leads, commercial concerns inevitably follow and so we see Ulster Bank ‘reviewing’ its national network in a way that will see its rural branch network decimated.