Figures show how weak regions are: Dublin gets 85% of passengers

In a little over a month almost 400,000 voters in Cork, Limerick, and Waterford will decide on a proposal to have directly elected mayors run their city. That idea is one of four to be determined on May 24. Local and European elections, and a referendum on our divorce legislation, are also scheduled.

The Government is encouraging the idea of directly elected mayors. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar argues that it will strengthen the regions’ hand in the never-ending knock-and-drag with central government over envied but scarce resources. The shabby, duck-and-dodge decision by Mr Varadkar’s cabinet to defer a review of property tax rates (one that ignored attorney general, Seamus Woulfe’s advice) until well beyond any timeframe an election might impose suggests that those resources will even more hard-won. The first directly-elected mayors might find themselves, like General Friedrich Paulus during the terrible last days at Stalingrad, expected to deliver results with non-existent resources.