Sir, – In an otherwise splendid piece, Eoin MacLachlan rather misses a very glaring point in terms of the duty and role of central government in deciding where jobs, investments and population density converge (“Housing shortage has sparked dangerous talk of ‘managed’ migration”, Opinion & Analysis, March 7th).
No-one can deny that there is simply an excessive reliance on Dublin regarding the rest of the urban centres of the country, to the detriment of housing availability in the capital, balanced regional development and, I hasten to add, price pressures more broadly speaking.
I understand that IDA Ireland has been sponsoring a worthwhile initiative to drive foreign direct investment into the regions and thereby achieve more optimal outcomes overall.
Ought the Government seek to explicitly reward people to consider living outside the capital city and relieve a choked, congested and overburdened Dublin of its primary role as the main source of wealth, prosperity and career prospects?
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The Government could devise a system of fiscal incentives to champion this kind of sensible sustainable and necessary smaller regional city development. The time has come to favour a concerted integrated policy to prioritise this type of economic activity, ahead of unsustainable overdependence on our capital city, with all the negative externalities that entails. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN NEWMAN
Sutton,
England.
