The Taoiseach is being urged to establish a high-level commission to examine the case for developing a "multi-city cluster of international significance" involving Cork, Limerick and Galway as an effective counterpole to Dublin.
Dr Edward Walsh, former president of the University of Limerick, will tell the Shannon Chamber of Commerce tomorrow that such a cluster would be "potentially more attractive than Dublin as a location for knowledge-based enterprise".
Dr Walsh argues that no individual regional capital in Ireland can compete with Dublin on its own.
"Each lacks the scale to justify the specialist services in finance, law and technology that advanced knowledge-age enterprise requires," he says.
"Young, well-educated people follow the sophisticated knowledge-age jobs to Dublin, compounding the problems of the capital while draining the talent and potential of the regional cities in a way that no one intended or no one wants."
Though the Government produced a National Spatial Strategy and decentralisation programme, he said "both lack the focus, scale and vision necessary to counteract the momentum of growth in Dublin, or catch the national imagination".
What he finds most surprising is that the decentralisation programme "gives such little attention to the cities of Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford that represent, when inter-linked, the only real hope of developing a counterpole to Dublin".
The logical starting point, according to Dr Walsh, would be the "Atlantic Technology Corridor" concept to link Galway, Ennis, Shannon and Limerick, and to expand this to embrace Cork and, in the longer term, Waterford, Sligo and Derry.
The proposed high-level commission would comprise enterprise leaders, the city manager and university president from each city, "together with two or three of the best international planning minds that can be retained".
"For success, the exercise should be undertaken in the spirit of a pioneering initiative that could be expected to have as profound and beneficial effect on the nature of the economy and the community as did the Lemass initiatives in the 1960s.
"The project should be of sufficient scale and quality to catch not only the national imagination, but that of the international community also."
"Shannon must think in these terms, abandon special pleading and see its future in the broader context of the Atlantic Technopolis with unique global opportunities ... [ to] establish itself as a vital strategic component for passengers and cargo."
Though the overall project would be "a major national undertaking, phased over a 20-year period", Dr Walsh envisages that the commission he proposes would make an interim report after six months and a final report within one year.
