Regional development plans: A real chance to build a fairer society

In a world of pressing uncertainties is seems reasonable to suggest that we can rely on ever fewer bulwarks — international, national, social, political, religious, cultural or even personal — to endure.

One continuum we can rely on though is the relentless, ultimately self-destructive acceleration in human population growth and the challenges that pressure-cooker world will bring.

Fifty years ago, when a blind Éamon de Valera inspected the guard of honour at celebrations marking 1916, the world’s population stood at 3.4bn. This year, as the 1916 centenary was celebrated that population reached 7.5bn.