This report takes a first step towards providing consistent projections for key variables at the regional and county level and provides projections for a number of these variables up to 2040. This work is an important input for the production of the National Planning Framework (NPF), which will replace the National Spatial Strategy (NSS). The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government published a paper entitled Issues and Choices as part of the consultation process on the National Planning Framework (see Department of Housing, Planning, and Local Government, 2017). The Issues and Choices paper sets out the main issues to be addressed by the NPF and posed a series of question in relation to the future spatial patterns on which the Department of Housing and Planning sought submissions.3 The projections set out in Chapters 4 and 5 of this paper provide an important context in that they identify the likely development patterns under a ‘current trends’ scenario, where no effort is made to change the patterns of development that have been observed in the past.
As the development of a fully specified integrated regional model for Ireland is hampered by data gaps the approach used here is to consider those variables for which data are available and which help inform the planning process. These include population, employment and the location of jobs. Trends in these variables have important implications, for example, for the number and location of new housing units required, the type and amount of new infrastructure required, commuting patterns and the resulting transport requirements etc., all of which are central to efficient planning.
Given these limitations it is also beyond the scope to explicitly incorporate the interaction with Northern Ireland in the model. These are particularly important for Donegal, but are also relevant for other Border counties. It is also beyond the scope of this report to consider the potential impact of Brexit at the regional level. It should however be noted that early research by Morgenroth (2017) shows that Brexit is likely to have regionally differentiated effects and that a hard Brexit could hit counties Cavan and Monaghan particularly hard due to the importance of the agri-food sector in these counties
