TWICE THE SIZE - DIT Update - Dublin Institute of Technology

Political implications
Since the foundation of the State, politics in Ireland has been heavily influenced by parties with
strongly rural values. As a large part of the population migrated to urban areas and also
concentrated in the East there was also be a concentration of wealth and power in these areas.
A map showing the regional distribution of disposable income per person as a percentage of
national average (Fig. 10a) closely follows the boundary of the Border Midlands West Region
(Fig. 10b), which is recognised as the region in Ireland that is most in need of support and
intervention.
(a) (b)
Figure 10: (a) Disposable income per person as a percentage of national average; (b) regions in
Ireland. By Conor Skehan.
The majority of political representatives and votes will move Eastwards and policies will begin
to become increasingly focused on reflecting the values of an urbanised, Eastern majority. This
spatial pattern will mean that the changes in values – mentioned above - are also likely to have
a spatial pattern. This will accelerate and deepen the divergence between the political
expectations in each of these regions – the Western regions seeking to preserve the status quo,
while the Eastern regions will seek more autonomous and responsive, rational and effective
politics and governance. This will lead to conflicts between the emergence of a series of new
increasingly urban, non-traditional values and the older rural values held by an increasingly
small proportion of the population – who will still own and control the majority of the land in
the State. The main conflict will arise from an urbanising population and their associated
political structure - viewing rural areas primarily as recreational, aesthetic, cultural and
ecological resources – during a period when agriculture and rural societies will be highly
vulnerable due to the restructuring of post-CAP farming.
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