My dad visited a relation of mine in Scranton, Pensylvania a couple of years ago. He found a town devoid of personality and life, where the main streets were all but deserted, with boarded-up shops, crumbling pavements and vast empty parking lots. It was as if some kind of war-like atrocity had occurred and people had fled the town. No war had happened. There had been a flight of the middle class to the suburbs and the landing of the big-box retailers in the shopping parks on the outskirts. This is a bad omen for what the future of towns in rural Ireland.
The last fifteen years there have been attempts to Americanise our retailing by constructing warehouse-style stores out of town, some of which, such as the Park in Carrickmines have been a roaring success. However in the country they have sucked life and business out of town centres, turning once great main thoroughfares into decaying tumbleweeds. These retail parks are part of the disease, not the cure.
There's a line of thought which says rural Ireland is forgotten about. Ultimately the populist politicians who spout this line ad nauseum provide scant proposals for what can actually be done to revitalise places in the country which are victims of urban migration, which have low or no employment prospects and which have stagnant levels of growth. In this blog I identify a number of measures which we can take to inject life back into rural Irish towns. I stress that the key is getting people back into towns: getting them to live in the town, getting them to work in the town and getting them to shop in the town.
Co-working spaces are on the rise, providing an array of services to workers such as high speed internet, meeting rooms, cooking facilities and receptionist. This is known as 'external coworking' where a variety of entrepreneurs/SMEs can share office space, collaborate and dip into each others' knowledge pools.
In the cities, we have seen the rise of WeWork which currently runs three co-working spaces in Dublin and Dogpatch Labs in the CHQ building, transforming an empty Celtic Tiger relic into a bustling centre of enterprise and industry. While co-working spaces have proven their success for startups, freelancers and SMEs in cities, they demonstrate huge potential for rural Ireland.
Local enterprise boards should prioritise establishing purpose-built office space with high-speed broadband in the centre of towns/villages. The benefits are massive: a community of entrepreneurs is created, each providing supports and services to one another and makes the town a destination to bring customers and investors. Co-working spaces also provide the opportunity to work remotely for a company based in another corner of Ireland, or indeed the world.
This idea has caught on in Listowel, County Kerry, where HQ Listowel is launching in September.
What lies above...
Stroll down the main street of any Irish town and look up. Count the frayed blinds above every shop on the street. Observe the chipped, peeling paintwork and mouldy stains on the third story of each building, which clearly has not been home to life for many years. While there's a flight to the outskirts of towns to build 3-bed semi-Ds at inflated prices, with enough space for a trampoline in the garden and for Buster the labrador, there is vacant property just above our heads as we run our errands in the town centre.
Let's give grants to shop-owners to rejuvenate the accommodation above their shops in order to let it out to locals. Dublin City Council have the 'Living in the City Initiative' which seeks to give tax relief to those who either renovate property in the inner city area or convert it from a retail use to residential use. The scheme is also available in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Galway. Why not extend this to country towns?
Retail Excellence Ireland called for this too, but the discussion seems to be around cities and the better use of property which is currently unused. Local shop-owners receive an additional source of income from the rent, which can be reinvested in their business. There is less of a requirement to build disconnected, out-of-town developments, and town centres become places where one lives, rather than merely destinations where one shops.
This was convenient if you were a homeowner: the land was likely cheap and a large plot gave you sufficient space for Dad to justify his mid-life crisis purchase of a €5,000 ride-on lawnmower. These are far from ideal if you are in the business of town planning or urban development, though. It's expensive to funnel electricity, utilities and internet to each bungalow (perhaps the latter has exacerbated the headache with the national broadband roll-out). Also, civilisation is not accessible by foot, and because this type of development is not clustered, public transport cannot be run effectively, necessitating the homeowner to drive everywhere.
This has resulted in an institutionalised rural isolation: the elderly whose children have left home now inhabit these bungalows which are too large for their needs, are located in the middle of nowhere, have no next-door neighbours and no means of accessing their closest shop or doctor other than by car.
My granny is aged 92 and lives alone in a bungalow on the outskirts of a town in County Kerry. She is incredibly lucky to have thoughtful, conscientious neighbours and a good social circle, but given her frailty and the location of her home, she requires a taxi or a lift from friends in order to do her messages, get her hair done, play bridge or visit the doctor. That is isolating.
I fervently believe that the government should incentivise the elderly to move back into purpose-built retirement hubs in town centres. These would be a stone's throw from the services which they require: the church, the post office, the hairdresser, the doctor etc. They would provide social connections to the lonely. Before you accuse me of being ageist dictator, proposing the herding of old people into towns like flocks of sheep, that is exactly not what is intended. The establishment of retirement centres would not stripping the elderly of their independence, it would empower them to live life to the fullest.
It seems that the government are seeing sense with this idea and taking the initiative. Minister Jim Daly stated that the government is hoping to phase out nursing homes over the coming decades and replace them in part with retirement hubs of this nature.
Ironically, though the humble post office is seen as the life support of rural Ireland, An Post is in some ways facilitating the demise of retail in Irish towns by accelerating the rise of parcel delivery from online shops to the detriment of established local retailers. A spokesperson for An Post said that they delivered 100,000 parcels per day over the Christmas period last year.
If we want to take seriously the threat of Amazon & ASOS, we need to try to make it more attractive for consumers to shop in local towns. The playing field is tilted towards online retailers, who can provide a wider range of products, generally at lower prices through scale economies and can offer home delivery, which is not possible for local sole traders. Rational people will opt for convenience and price and purchase online instead of trekking into town and perhaps paying more.
If we want consumers to change their ways, we must hit them where it hurts: their wallets. By imposing an additional VAT rate on purchases made online, say 5% extra, we would make a more level playing field between independent retailers and internet giants. Why not then ring fence the tax take collected and plough it into improving amenities in local towns and villages? It's a win-win.
The last fifteen years there have been attempts to Americanise our retailing by constructing warehouse-style stores out of town, some of which, such as the Park in Carrickmines have been a roaring success. However in the country they have sucked life and business out of town centres, turning once great main thoroughfares into decaying tumbleweeds. These retail parks are part of the disease, not the cure.
There's a line of thought which says rural Ireland is forgotten about. Ultimately the populist politicians who spout this line ad nauseum provide scant proposals for what can actually be done to revitalise places in the country which are victims of urban migration, which have low or no employment prospects and which have stagnant levels of growth. In this blog I identify a number of measures which we can take to inject life back into rural Irish towns. I stress that the key is getting people back into towns: getting them to live in the town, getting them to work in the town and getting them to shop in the town.
"Two Will Do"
I'd like to coin a new phrase: Bogsplaining. Bogsplaining- a close relation of mansplaining - involves a person from rural Ireland condescendingly explaining to a person from urban Ireland why they do not understand the real struggles of living in the country.
Drink-driving has been bogsplained to us by the gombeen Healy-Rae brothers, who insist that getting behind the wheel after a few scoops is both a right of passage and a hallmark of life in rural Ireland. This Trumpian nonsense is indulged and propelled by the Irish media, which willingly accommodates discussions about these lines in panel debates and column-inches.
In 2017, 8900 drivers were arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and alcohol was a factor in nearly a third (29%) of all road collisions involving a pedestrian and a motorist. However Kerry's Tweedledum and Tweedle-TDs don't seem to be all that concerned about how we can further reduce these statistics, other than their suggestions to make more lenient punishments which facilitate drink driving.
They recently suggested that Gardai were breathalysing people coming home from mass, and presented this as some kind of shocking authoritarian move by the government against the humble people of rural Ireland going about their business. It's not. It's just called good policing. We also heard that, on no scientific / factual basis whatsoever, driving after indulging in second helpings of two meat and veg for Sunday lunch is just as dangerous as drink driving. It's no unusual coincidence that Danny Healy-Rae himself is a publican. We effectively have a lobbyist for the pub/alcohol business in the Dail. If you're telling me that rural Ireland cannot function without drink-driving, then I give up.
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| TDs Michael and Danny Healy-Rae. (Source: Irish Mirror) |
Drink-driving has been bogsplained to us by the gombeen Healy-Rae brothers, who insist that getting behind the wheel after a few scoops is both a right of passage and a hallmark of life in rural Ireland. This Trumpian nonsense is indulged and propelled by the Irish media, which willingly accommodates discussions about these lines in panel debates and column-inches.
In 2017, 8900 drivers were arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and alcohol was a factor in nearly a third (29%) of all road collisions involving a pedestrian and a motorist. However Kerry's Tweedledum and Tweedle-TDs don't seem to be all that concerned about how we can further reduce these statistics, other than their suggestions to make more lenient punishments which facilitate drink driving.
They recently suggested that Gardai were breathalysing people coming home from mass, and presented this as some kind of shocking authoritarian move by the government against the humble people of rural Ireland going about their business. It's not. It's just called good policing. We also heard that, on no scientific / factual basis whatsoever, driving after indulging in second helpings of two meat and veg for Sunday lunch is just as dangerous as drink driving. It's no unusual coincidence that Danny Healy-Rae himself is a publican. We effectively have a lobbyist for the pub/alcohol business in the Dail. If you're telling me that rural Ireland cannot function without drink-driving, then I give up.
Leaving Tweedledum and Tweedle-TD alone, there are some fair concerns about how we are really going to tackle drink driving in a way which is conducive and cognisant to the realities of life in rural areas where taxis are in short supply and where the pub is the community centre. You've got to also remember that older folk in rural Ireland who were behind the wheel in an era before drink-driving laws and when the 'two pints will do' slogan was the low bar set.
If county councils are serious about providing solutions to drink-driving, they should use commercial rates which they collect from bars and nightclubs to fund late night bus services. The LocalLink service is a little spoken about innovation from Transport for Ireland which provides reliable bus links between remote areas in rural Ireland not generally served by public transport and currently operates in 17 different areas including Kerry, Monaghan and Laois Offaly. Some of the services even will pick you up from your door and drop you along the route. The evening services only run until 11pm, so why not extend these services until closing time in the pubs? It's one simple solution that has tangible impacts on the lives of those in rural towns and villages.
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| Local Link Bus Service |
Working together
Let's focus on getting business back into town centres. Your typical Irish town mostly consists of retail space, with perhaps a local solicitors office, the social welfare centre and an insurance sales office. Getting enterprise and industry into the centre of towns is important.Co-working spaces are on the rise, providing an array of services to workers such as high speed internet, meeting rooms, cooking facilities and receptionist. This is known as 'external coworking' where a variety of entrepreneurs/SMEs can share office space, collaborate and dip into each others' knowledge pools.
In the cities, we have seen the rise of WeWork which currently runs three co-working spaces in Dublin and Dogpatch Labs in the CHQ building, transforming an empty Celtic Tiger relic into a bustling centre of enterprise and industry. While co-working spaces have proven their success for startups, freelancers and SMEs in cities, they demonstrate huge potential for rural Ireland.
 |
| Dogpatch Labs in Dublin's CHQ building. |
Local enterprise boards should prioritise establishing purpose-built office space with high-speed broadband in the centre of towns/villages. The benefits are massive: a community of entrepreneurs is created, each providing supports and services to one another and makes the town a destination to bring customers and investors. Co-working spaces also provide the opportunity to work remotely for a company based in another corner of Ireland, or indeed the world.
This idea has caught on in Listowel, County Kerry, where HQ Listowel is launching in September.
What lies above...
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| Accommodation above shops is left derelict and decaying, while there is a rush to build out-of-town apartment complexes. (Photo: Dublin Inquirer) |
Let's give grants to shop-owners to rejuvenate the accommodation above their shops in order to let it out to locals. Dublin City Council have the 'Living in the City Initiative' which seeks to give tax relief to those who either renovate property in the inner city area or convert it from a retail use to residential use. The scheme is also available in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Galway. Why not extend this to country towns?
Retail Excellence Ireland called for this too, but the discussion seems to be around cities and the better use of property which is currently unused. Local shop-owners receive an additional source of income from the rent, which can be reinvested in their business. There is less of a requirement to build disconnected, out-of-town developments, and town centres become places where one lives, rather than merely destinations where one shops.
Pensioners' Paridise
Former Irish Times journalist Frank McDonald describes the 'bungalow blitz' which occurred in Ireland throughout the 20th Century. Houses were built sporadically and carelessly alongside death-trap roads between sleepy villages. These dull relics of architecture are the architectural equivalent of brown bread: dull & tasteless but does the job. The bungalow blitz seeped into the Irish psyche, to the extent that the question 'Does (s)he have road frontage?' has become a customary chat-up line by budding Irish courters trying to find a suitable partner.This was convenient if you were a homeowner: the land was likely cheap and a large plot gave you sufficient space for Dad to justify his mid-life crisis purchase of a €5,000 ride-on lawnmower. These are far from ideal if you are in the business of town planning or urban development, though. It's expensive to funnel electricity, utilities and internet to each bungalow (perhaps the latter has exacerbated the headache with the national broadband roll-out). Also, civilisation is not accessible by foot, and because this type of development is not clustered, public transport cannot be run effectively, necessitating the homeowner to drive everywhere.
This has resulted in an institutionalised rural isolation: the elderly whose children have left home now inhabit these bungalows which are too large for their needs, are located in the middle of nowhere, have no next-door neighbours and no means of accessing their closest shop or doctor other than by car.My granny is aged 92 and lives alone in a bungalow on the outskirts of a town in County Kerry. She is incredibly lucky to have thoughtful, conscientious neighbours and a good social circle, but given her frailty and the location of her home, she requires a taxi or a lift from friends in order to do her messages, get her hair done, play bridge or visit the doctor. That is isolating.
I fervently believe that the government should incentivise the elderly to move back into purpose-built retirement hubs in town centres. These would be a stone's throw from the services which they require: the church, the post office, the hairdresser, the doctor etc. They would provide social connections to the lonely. Before you accuse me of being ageist dictator, proposing the herding of old people into towns like flocks of sheep, that is exactly not what is intended. The establishment of retirement centres would not stripping the elderly of their independence, it would empower them to live life to the fullest.
It seems that the government are seeing sense with this idea and taking the initiative. Minister Jim Daly stated that the government is hoping to phase out nursing homes over the coming decades and replace them in part with retirement hubs of this nature.
Catch it in the Net
The main street is under attack from online shopping. The Central Bank forecasted that total e-commerce sales were likely to reach €16 billion by the end of 2018 and that spend had increased by 11% between September 2017 and September 2018. This comes at the same time that sales in shops on our streets fall by 7%.
Ironically, though the humble post office is seen as the life support of rural Ireland, An Post is in some ways facilitating the demise of retail in Irish towns by accelerating the rise of parcel delivery from online shops to the detriment of established local retailers. A spokesperson for An Post said that they delivered 100,000 parcels per day over the Christmas period last year.
If we want to take seriously the threat of Amazon & ASOS, we need to try to make it more attractive for consumers to shop in local towns. The playing field is tilted towards online retailers, who can provide a wider range of products, generally at lower prices through scale economies and can offer home delivery, which is not possible for local sole traders. Rational people will opt for convenience and price and purchase online instead of trekking into town and perhaps paying more.
If we want consumers to change their ways, we must hit them where it hurts: their wallets. By imposing an additional VAT rate on purchases made online, say 5% extra, we would make a more level playing field between independent retailers and internet giants. Why not then ring fence the tax take collected and plough it into improving amenities in local towns and villages? It's a win-win.
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