Population prediction - A challenge to imagine a new Ireland

AT the moment it’s hard to imagine what Ireland might be like in 50 months’ time.

Will we have defaulted? Who will be in Government? What kind of tax hikes or pay cuts will we have endured? Will we be full members of the eurozone? Who will be sending out the invitations to the Áras an Uachtaráin summer garden party? Will Seán O’Brien make the 2015 World Cup in England? Will the east coast population’s appetite for water have drained the Shannon?

Even if you cut that timeframe back to 50 days, it’s not that easy to be certain about many of those questions but this week the EU statistics agency Eurostat asked us to look half a century into the future.

Eurostat predicted that there will be 2,000,000 more of us than there are now — that our population will rise from something around 4.5 million to 6.5 million. This is very much in line with international predictions as the United Nations have said that world population will grow to 9.1 billion by 2050, a considerable increase in today’s population of 6.8 billion.

In an Irish context this represents enormous challenges but the prediction brings obligations and opportunities too. The scale of every major project — whenever we start building them again — will have to be tailored to meet that expectation. Everything from roads to schools, from hospitals to waste treatment, from food security to energy independence will have to be imagined on a new scale. And, as much as we might wish to pass the burden to coming generations we cannot. We must almost immediately shape our vision of the future to cope with that population.

How can we manage our precious water resources and provide for a 46% increase in population? Obviously today’s great waste must be confronted but the projected increase in demand suggests that a huge cultural change in how we use, and misuse, water is required. Can we really rely on a combination of ever more expensive and scarce imported fuels and evolving renewable energy to sustain the lives of our grandchildren? The time scales involved in providing alternatives are so great that this is the time to begin a real, unemotional debate on this life-or-death issue.

Are we doing enough to ensure that we are at least independent in one area where we can be — food production? Though so much of modern agriculture is about turning oil into food there must be more we can do to encourage Irish food producers. It may be too that we may have to contemplate curtailing our appetite for meat and become more used to a vegetarian diet. There must be ways too that we can harvest the great riches of the seas around us without being recklessly exploitative or causing the pollution associated with sectors of the fish farming industry.

Our current difficulties will pass sooner or later but the challenge represented by a population of 6.5 million people in this Republic cannot be ignored. They have the capacity to re-energise this economy and reshape our cities and towns if we can find the resources and courage to begin building the Ireland for the second half of this century.