Last summer I was with the children down west. We were broadcasting Countrywide from Westport. On the Friday night, we took a spin out along the beautiful coastline that hugs the Atlantic. Truly God’s country. As we meandered back towards civilisation, I asked them if someday they’d like to live in the rural countryside, not just here in the wilds of Mayo but the countryside in general. “No way Dad” was the firm answer from these two Dubs. “Who would want to live here?”

I can’t speak for all the young people of Ireland but whether it’s by choice or by force, there are undoubtedly swathes of our land starved of young people who have left. Roscommon journalist Seamus Duke remarked recently on Prime Time that there are very few 18- to 40-year-olds still around town. They are gone or going. He has four daughters. He doesn’t envisage any of them living in the county once their studies are complete.

That would be no different than the young women and men like them going back many decades. My parents are from rural Ireland and came to Dublin half a century ago. I remember most of my primary school friends in Castleknock having at least one if not both parents from outside the pale. Maybe it is only now the result of the mass expansion of suburban Dublin is being felt in towns and villages where shops and services have shut for the last time.

Of course, it is a very sad situation when you see shop fronts in country towns closed up. We all have lovely memories of those same shops we visited as children, no longer with us, even in Dublin. And we reminisce about those old days. But then you look at old YouTube footage from the ’80s and ’90s and just can’t imagine such shop frontage today. That process continues. It’s life.

So, rather than being seen as a sort of preventable apocalypse, we need to appreciate this is an unstoppable force, an evolution of the modern world as it always has been. And it is not just happening in Ireland. Migration to cities is a phenomenon right across Europe, right across America, right across China.

In Ireland, there were 230,000 farms 40 years ago. It’s about half that now, although production and output has multiplied. Why? Farms have just gotten bigger and more efficient. Family pubs and shops have closed in tandem as lifestyles change and we buy online. We drive bigger cars on better motorways so people can travel further to work and to shop. Old trades have become redundant. But new ones have emerged – many such start-ups in rural Ireland and many in the artisan food space. This is the future, not necessarily the IDA enticing large-scale foreign direct investment to this town or that with a minister to cut the tape.

The Government has been embarrassed, unethically spinning its “Project 2040” strategy. Is the current administration hoping to be in office until 2040 or are they confident future governments will not tinker with it? What do you think?

In the meantime, rural areas will continue to evolve. Shops will close. Farms will get bigger. Country people will come to live in Dublin and Copper Face Jacks will keep on going. CL

An obedient nation

There is this criticism that we as a people are too obedient. That might be a negative in some respects but when it came to heeding orders during last week’s snow, the obedience was a positive. Apart from the predictable few clowns, we were sensible and did what we were told while, as usual, first responders and farmers showed what mighty people they are.