Agency dismantled by stealth
The proposals to transfer control of the Shannon industrial zone to the new airport authority and Shannon Development’s enterprise promotion functions to Enterprise Ireland will effectively emasculate an agency which has brought many benefits to the mid-west over the years.
Yet I am not aware that these decisions were based on any prior evaluation of the effectiveness of Shannon Development or any considered assessment of the impact of the decisions on the future development of the region. This, of course, is very similar to the approach taken by the Government with its decentralisation proposals and the decision to fund the Punchestown equestrian centre.
One can only conclude that the measures relating to Shannon Development are primarily concerned with facilitating the break-up of Aer Rianta and the relocation of Enterprise Ireland to Shannon, and that their broader implications have not been considered.
One might have expected the Government not to make any decisions concerning the future of Shannon Development prior to the publication of the report of the Enterprise Strategy Group, set up by Tánaiste Mary Harney last year to advise the Government on future enterprise and employment promotion strategy.
By acting in advance of this report, the Government signalled that its own short-term concerns were taking priority over broader developmental considerations.
The last major government-sponsored report on industrial policy, the 1992 Culliton report, recommended that the promotion of indigenous industry in Ireland should be regionalised.
In other words, there should be a Shannon Development-type agency in each region.
However, while other parts of the Culliton report were implemented with alacrity, for reasons which were never explained this particular recommendation was not acted upon.
Since then, the general trend in regional development policy throughout Europe has been to devolve development responsibility as much as possible to regional institutions which are more in touch with local needs and resources, and better able to achieve co-ordination between the various sectors at regional level.
In the Irish context, such institutions could play a key role in achieving the objectives set out in the national spatial strategy.
Yet here we have the Government breaking up the only effective regional development institution in the country (with the possible exception of Údarás na Gaeltachta) and moving its enterprise development function to central control.
This lack of logical consistency, unfortunately, has been a recurring feature of the approach to regional development of successive governments down through the years.
Proinnsias Breathnach
Department of Geography
NUI Maynooth
Co Kildare
