Resisting the Magnet of Dublin

Wicklow Opinion

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Resisting the Magnet of Dublin

Wednesday, September 18 2002

Anybody who spends a large part of their life travelling in and out of Dublin to work will be aware of the value of local jobs near to where people live. Instead of getting up at 6:30 in the morning to spend and hour and a half in traffic, you get up at 8:00 to be in work for 9:00 nice and relaxed and ready to face the day ahead. Instead of queuing in a deli for a roll, you can go home for lunch and instead of spending Saturday trying to catch up with your life you can go to the bank and the post office and your local doctor during the day. Working local is how people are meant to live.

But the magnetic power of Dublin is making it more and more difficult to work local. Instead, the towns and villages of Wicklow are becoming dormitory towns - places for the workforce of the offices and factories of Dublin to rest for a few hour before another long, daily journey to work. When people work in Dublin they are more likely to also shop in Dublin and socialise in Dublin and so Dublin becomes bigger and its magnetic effect becomes stronger.

When people are travelling through stressful traffic for 3 hours a day they are not at their most energetic when they arrive home at 7:00pm. If you are part of the daily exodus to Dublin you'll know the feeling - a quick bite of food and collapse for an hour of television before bed - after all, you have to get up early to do it all again. This means that commuters have little time for community groups and clubs. They don't usually volunteer as youth leaders, or sit on local committees or help organise festivals and community associations and all the other non-commercial activities of a healthy community. They are too tired - they don't have time.

And so, day by routine day, once healthy local communities become hollowed out and turned into dormitory towns providing residential services to the workforce of the all powerful centre.

It doesn't have to be this way. Local jobs were once the norm and can be the norm again. Policies and activities that encourage local enterprise, the provision of local outlets for people to trade simply and easily, the encouragement of tele-working and other non-traditional work patterns - all these can make a difference. Creating a healthy local economy is not about getting the IDA to grant a big multi-national or two to locate in the town (come easy, go easy). Instead it is about the strength, security and social health that comes from a diversity of small local enterprise and work patterns. It's not impossible. it just takes a bit of imagination and a real commitment to standing up to the trend of centralisation.

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