I first heard the term, "dublinitis" in the 80s.
It meant nothing to me. I didn't live here ands I didn't have a handle on what it meant to live in the 26 counties and not be in striking distance of the Rare Oul Town.
Now I do-oh how I do!
Clearly the position of Donegal is special to the point of scandalous.
WE have no rail link-this paper covered Sinn Fein's strategy paper in length recently-we are simply cut off form the rest of the island in terms of transport infrastructure.
John McGinley has been a Berlin Airlift on wheels to Clochaneely for years.
Bus Eireann don't go that far.....
Now there is another problem on the transport horizon as far as I can see for Donegal.
Even with 120,000 souls we don't rate much of a mentionin the affairs of the Free State.
Now we might lose more people and any little voice we have as the haemorrhage of our young people continues towards Dublin.
Now with the "explosion" of Dublin the Republic of Ireland is set to be governed by a city-state in the 21st century.
Along the lines of the old Pale of medieval times any development will be contained within a car drive of Dublin.
Dublin is marching outwards into Leinster like a Cromwellian Army taking over land and squashing village communities.
No one-it appears-is prepared to shout "STOP!"
The figures involved in the invasion of Leinster simply beggar the imagination.
The Greater Dublin Area (GDA) already contains 40 per cent of the State's population - 8 per cent more than it accounted for in 1961. By the middle of this century, at the rate things are going, the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) could surpass the critical level of 50 per cent.
But given that much Dublin-related housing is being built far beyond the GDA, (which includes Meath, Kildare and Wicklow),
not only are the GDA's outlying counties growing more than four times faster than the rest of the State, but the lack of affordable housing in Dublin has encouraged thousands of first-time house-buyers to look much further afield - even as far as Virginia, Co. Cavan.
In theory, Dublin's development is governed by strategic planning guidelines (SPGs), published in April 1999. But though the SPGs ostensibly set out to consolidate the metropolitan area, at least 75 per cent of the anticipated population growth over the next 10 years - which could be as high as 300,000 - would be housed outside the city.
One of the inevitable consequences is that the M50, originally envisaged as a bypass of Dublin for national traffic, no longer fulfils that function, with traffic volumes already close to capacity at 68,300 vehicles per day on average last year. This figure is bound to rise when the rest of the route is completed and a second bridge is built over the Liffey Valley.
What was meant to be a bypass has become the spine of a US-style "Edge City" strung out with high-tech industry, business parks, and shopping centres and retail warehousing.
Business parks - "21st-century battery-hen working environments" as one senior planner called them - are also being planned for the Kilcullen Road outside Naas, Co. Kildare, with parking for up to 7,000 cars, and an even larger 250-acre "gateway" development outside Clonee, Co Meath, in an area designated as "strategic green-belt" by the SPGs.
As the march of the "Burbs" continues Westwards into rural Leinster and as a far away as Cavan-as far away as Cavan.
The City inside the City-State is itself dying.
The population of Dublin City actually declined faster than the population of Leitrim between 1971 and 1991!
The only answer to this demographic mess is-in my opinion- an all-island strategy.
The NorthWest region (Derry,Donegal, Fermanagh Leitrim,Sligo & Tyrone) currently is home to over 400,000 people.
The west of the six counties is governed by the Belfast City State.
That polity sees Derry as a rival and Strabane as part of "The South".
In Donegal we are governed, of course, from even further away.
So far away in fact that we are we are not even a remote outpost of M50ville.
If there no advance towards-simultaneously and all-Ireland governmental dimension AND a vigorous process of devolution & decentralisation away from Belfast & Dublin rule then the North West of this island will be emptied of its brightest & best.
That-of course-is happening apace at the moment.
This requires a political response that is all-island in its vision and local in its application.
Politicians whose parties stop at the border-either way-cannot advance this to any great degree.
Last week I had a plate of stew in Strabane with a politician who -I fervently hope- will soon have to power to advance his vision for the NorthWest.
You might know him some of ye.
He's a Glasgow boy from Gortnabrade.....
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
