Addressing the imbalance

Growth plan for regions has failed to deliver, writes Political Reporter Mary Dundon

IT was launched amid huge pomp and ceremony in the lavish surroundings of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, Dublin on November 28, 2002.

Three huge banners declaring the National Spatial Strategy was all about People, Places and Potential donned the outside of the hospital.

Standing between them were Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former Environment Minister Martin Cullen telling us this was going to be the solution to all our regional imbalance problems.

The Taoiseach said this blueprint for regional development would lead to a better quality of life for all by tackling congestion and spreading job opportunities around the country.

Today, the opposition claim the NSS is "dead in the water" because it has failed to deliver one new job

outside Dublin and done nothing to reverse the massive regional imbalance that according to the Greens has half of the east coast tilting into the Irish Sea.

The whole country was bamboozled by the new jargon that came with the National Spatial Strategy.

We were told that "gateways" and "hubs" would act as engines for regional growth. The "gateways" included Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Letterkenny and the triangle of Athlone/Mullingar/Tullamore.

These would be backed up by nine more "hub" towns which would support the growth in these cities and link into the wider rural areas.

These included Cavan, Ennis, Kilkenny, Mallow, Monaghan, Tuam, Wexford, Ballina/Castlebar, Tralee/Killarney.

Both the employers' group IBEC and the IDA criticised the selection of so many regional centres for development at the time and warned that a maximum of five should have been chosen.

What we did not know then was that at least 1.3 million in consultancy fees had been paid out to 16 private firms to research, compile and market the NSS.

The Irish Examiner has established that at least that amount of money was paid out to private consultants, but it does not include the 800-a-day fee (plus VAT) paid to PR woman Monica Leech, who was brought in by Mr Cullen to work on the project despite the fact one of the country's biggest public relations companies, Drury Communications, was already working on it.

Both Mr Cullen and Environment Minister Dick Roche have confirmed to the Dáil that Drury Communications was the firm paid the highest calculable fee for working on the NSS 383,556.85.

The department said Ms Leech was employed to work on several of their projects at the same time so it is impossible to calculate just how much she was paid just for the NSS work.

The exact figure may emerge when the former head of the Revenue Commissioners, Dermot Quigley, has completed his investigation into the circumstances surrounding the contracts awarded to Ms Leech by Mr Cullen.

What we do know is that a further 13 private consultants earned 765,726.94 preparing the NSS and another firm, White, Young, Green, earned 184,430.13 working on the project.

The lowest fee of 1,452 was earned by Jonathan Blackwell, according to figures supplied to the Dáil by both Mr Cullen and his successor, Mr Roche.

The opposition believe the 1.3m paid to private consultants was a complete waste of taxpayers' money because they claim the NSS is now "dead in the water".

The Labour Party says not one job has been created outside Dublin to stop its growing sprawl since the NSS was launched.

Labour also believes the Governfment itself fell at the first hurdle when it could have lead the way by being the first employer to move large groups of workers to the 18 centres identified as engines of growth outside Dublin by the NSS.

The decentralisation of 10,000 civil servants first announced by Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy one year after the NSS was launched in December 2003 provided the great opportunity to do just this.

But instead, when the watered down version of the plan was finally announced by Mr McCreevy's successor, Brian Cowen, in November 2004, it showed that civil servants were only going to be moved to 24 of the original 53 centres outside Dublin in the first phase.

Also, only three of nine "gateways" and two of the nine "hubs" identified in the NSS as engines for regional growth were given decentralised Government departments.

Furthermore, most of the 24 cities and towns picked for the first phase of decentralisation were clearly for political reasons, with the move of 135 Department of Finance staff to the Tullamore home town of Finance Minister Brian Cowen a prime example.

The Green Party believes the NSS project is "dead in the water" because the Government would not bite the political bullet and just pick five regional centres for growth instead of 18. It may be that the fear of losing votes in the 2004 local elections was the reason why so many centres were selected.

But it was easy for the Government to select so many gateways and hubs because it was not accompanied by any State investment programme.

As Environment Minister, Mr Cullen tried to justify this by saying the NSS was not an investment document "but a framework from which investment can happen".

Well, it has not happened so far.

In defence of the NSS, the Department of the Environment insists that it is "disingenuous" of the opposition to claim the 1.3m spent on the project was a complete waste of time.

Mr Cullen stressed at the launch that we could not expect the NSS to work within two or three years because it is a 20-year project. Mr Cullen also proclaimed he was confident that within 10 or 20 years we will look back and say it has worked.

CURRENT Environment Minister Dick Roche believes that progress has been made in the NSS now that it has been incorporated into the Regional Planning Guidelines and local authorities have incorporated it into their development plans up to 2020.

Mr Roche also said that the 90m allocated to re-open the Cork to Midleton railway line was as a direct result of the spatial strategy and a good example of putting infrastructure in place before pursuing housing and industrial development.

This may be so, but the timing of the announcement on the Cork to Midleton railway line just before the 2004 June local elections also lead to claims that it was done to win votes.

Mr Roche said that progress is being made in developing the nine "gateways" with implementation frameworks in place for Cork, Galway and others about to be developed.

But why were Cork and Galway cities not included in the first phase of decentralisation if they are so high on the regional development priority list?

Now the latest relaxation of the planning guidelines will allow superstores like IkeaAkia to set up in the nine gateways designated for development outside Dublin.

But it remains to be seen what benefit this will bring.

It looks like the Government has lost its big chance to do something about the growing regional imbalance.

This was best summed up by Green Party environment spokesman Eamon Ryan when he said: "It was a wasted opportunity, the country is tilting into the east coast, Leinster is a dormitory province for Dublin city and transport patterns are completely unsustainable."