Calls to invest outside capital to develop new tier of cities

CALLS for an economic ‘counterbalance’ to Dublin’s bloated overweighting, and for infrastructure investment outside the capital to develop a new tier of cities, have come fast and furious since a strong speech by former Department of Finance head John Moran. 

Addressing chartered surveyors, he had called for development along the western corridor, with a high-speed rail link to Limerick and linking into Cork.

The SCSI surveyors conference was held, quite coincidentally, on March 31, the date on which the extended deadline for submissions closed on the Government’s vital National Planning Framework/Ireland 2040 plan.

Cities “are the new countries,” noted surveyor Kevin Nowlan, CEO of Hibernia REIT. He warned that knowledge workers aged 25-40 “if they can’t get a place to live, they won’t come here”.

Irish cities need a ‘fit for purpose’ local government and delivery of housing and infrastructure to grow the economy in a balanced way, Mr Nowlan argued, and gave as examples of bad planning the way Cork Airport Business Park drew office jobs which should have been on Cork’s quays out of the city, and how Limerick’s retail core was decimated in the past decade by suburban retail parks.

Also at the SCSI event, IDA CEO Martin Shanahan noted that while Dublin was addressing office shortages, there absolutely was “a pinch-point,” on the accommodation front and noted that Galway would struggle today to meet demand for new offices and FDI arrivals.

Mr Moran said: “Government has many levers to pull to encourage growth in a particular location. It can build quality housing, health and educational services, improve public transport options, locate third level spaces there in priority and have the best public realm and cultural facilities in those cities so they become known as a place with best in class services and where costs do not spiral.”

Other calls for a counterweight have since come from a range of professions, from planners and architects, to the construction industry and politicians.

The Irish Planning Institute has said that Ireland “can no longer adopt a business-as-usual approach when it comes to planning”, while the CIF’s Tom Parlon, has warned that even if the Government gave the motorway go ahead to the Cork/Limerick M20 to create an economic corridor to counter-balance Dublin “it would be five years at least before construction could begin, due to planning and procurement.