There can be few more beautiful places than the west of Ireland experiencing an Indian summer. On Thursday morning, when the sun burned through the mist, Limerick city emerged, a Georgian gem. Looking east over the slow-flowing Shannon, with the bright autumn light illuminating this well-planned patchwork of red-bricked streets, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Limerick’s potential to be a model of refurbished, small-scale urban living.
On Friday morning, again in cheerful sunlight, the liveliness at the core of Galway city evoked a different size and style. These two cities, Limerick and Galway, are essential to Ireland’s future development.
The western seaboard is Ireland’s economic secret weapon and, if planned properly over next 50 years, development of the west could help ensure that the country becomes suitably balanced. The likely unification of the island – in some form – means the west is awake once more.
From a geographical point of view, unity is an eastern affair, with the Dublin/Belfast corridor dominant in terms of population density, income, industry and economic heft. Left to its own devices, the economy is likely to become even more concentrated in a thin sliver of land from Wicklow to Antrim. But cities in the rest of the island should counterbalance this and counterbalancing requires a plan.
Galway has always been a bit special with its strong tourist trade, bolstered by the marketing of the Wild Atlantic Way in recent years, extending well into autumn. This week is freshers’ week and sees the return of 20,000 university students. Alongside the good weather, this makes for an infectious atmosphere.
Home to Druid and Macnas, the city has long been a stronghold for Irish culture, theatre and the arts. These days, it boasts culinary excellence, too (with the likes of Aniar, Kai, and Ard Bia, for example), drawing high praise in the pages of the Financial Times and beyond. The natural beauty of Connemara, the Burren and the Clare coastline is unrivalled.
But it’s not all trad and lobster – far from it. The west is becoming a powerhouse in the pharmaceutical and biomedical sectors. Galway hosts medical device giants such as Medtronic and Boston Scientific, while Limerick boasts pharmaceutical leaders such as Regeneron and Eli Lilly.
The top 10 biopharmaceutical companies in the world are now based in Ireland, and they have fundamentally transformed the region’s economic landscape. The biopharma sector accounts for more than 60 per cent of Ireland’s total exports. We are now the third-largest exporter of pharmaceuticals globally, with more than €116 billion in exports annually.
The medical technology sector alone employs more than 25,000 people, predominantly in these cities. Galway is Europe’s medical technology hub, employing 15,000 people in the city alone, and half of the medtech companies based in Galway have dedicated research and development facilities.
[ Ireland may be unable to fill future biopharma jobs, says reportOpens in new window ]
In the past decade, €10 billion has been invested in new biopharmaceutical production facilities around Ireland. About 80 per cent of the world’s supply of stents are now produced here, largely coming from facilities on the eastern outskirts of Galway city that can churn out around 10,000 stents per day or about two million annually.
Home-grown success stories, such as Aerogen – a Galway-based medical-devices company specialising in the treatment of respiratory diseases that was founded more than 25 years ago above a butcher’s shop in Moycullen – now generate about €120 million in revenue and employ some 500 people in the city.
Limerick has further cemented its position as a biopharma hub, with the announcement this week of a $1 billion (€927 million) investment by Eli Lilly that is expected to create a further 150 jobs at its Raheen facility (bringing the total for the site to 450). And beyond these healthcare industries, both Galway and Limerick have vibrant tech and financial services sectors.
But, as always in Ireland, this private sector vibrancy is hamstrung by lamentable infrastructure provision. Housing shortages have reached crisis levels in both Limerick and Galway. Based on the latest Daft Rental Report for Q2 of this year, average Galway city rents stood at €2,114 per month, reflecting a 13.3 per cent uptick year-on-year. Limerick faced a slightly lower average rent of €2,107, but considerably higher growth of 21.2 per cent. The average sale price for property listed in Galway city was €402,885, compared with €292,253 to buy in Limerick.
[ Planning for united Ireland must start now, Oireachtas committee advisesOpens in new window ]
Transport infrastructure tells a similar tale of neglect. Based on a Global Traffic Scorecard for 2023, Galway ranks as the 37th worst city in the world for traffic congestion and the 14th worst in Europe, translating into the city’s drivers spending an additional 73 hours per year in their cars – at a minimum wage, that amounts to just under €1,000-worth of their time.
The report also estimates that congestion in Galway has become 12 per cent worse year-on-year. This is ludicrous. The situation in Limerick is not much better, with the Mick Mackey roundabout equally chaotic each morning and tailbacks often backed up on to the M7.
Ireland must get serious about spatial development and planning. The west (and the south) should be a national priority, and this means linking cities in the same way as other European countries do. Take, for example, the Netherlands, where small cities are linked by decent train services, enhancing connections and creating clusters of industry and economic activity in smaller cities other than the main ones.
The Dutch have 27 or so small cities with populations in the 50,000 to 100,000 range – as small as Waterford city and as big as Limerick or Galway. Most of their disparate cities are linked efficiently by rail: Eindhoven to Arnhem (70km) in one hour 10 minutes; Leiden to Utrecht (40km) in 35 minutes; and Groningen to Leeuwarden (55km) in 35 minutes. For comparison, the distance between Galway and Limerick (85km) is similar to Eindhoven-Arnhem, yet the journey takes at least two hours and there are only four trains a day.
The Netherlands has maintained this vibrant ecosystem of interrelated smaller cities by design. The Dutch engineered the map of the country, boosting public investment in underpopulated areas so as to minimise internal migration that would naturally denude smaller cities of people and thus capacity.
As we look forward to constitutional change on this island, we need to reimagine the mental map of the country, away from the centralisation of Dublin in the Republic and Belfast in the North. When the country was partitioned in 1921, this process of concentration on the east and northeast became embedded. Now the island is dangerously lopsided and the economic future for the island should be diffuse, not concentrated.
The west’s awake. Let’s just make sure it stays that way.