Sir, – Pat Leahy ("No easy job to assemble Swedish-style welfare state", Opinion & Analysis, February 29th) make some solid arguments from a taxation perspective as to why it will be difficult for Ireland to match Scandinavian public-service levels, but he omits one of the most significant factors – urbanisation. The population of Scandinavia is overwhelmingly urban. Some 88 per cent of Denmark's population live in towns, and the figures for Sweden, Finland and Norway are 87 per cent, 85 per cent and 82 per cent respectively.
This trend is perhaps explained in part by harsh winter weather conditions and the need for people historically to cluster together for mutual support, but it gives the Scandinavians a huge boost in cost-effectiveness when it comes to delivering public services.
Studies in the UK and elsewhere have found that the cost of maintaining services such as public transport, road maintenance, post, utilities, policing, healthcare and education to dispersed populations is between 50 per cent and 100 per cent greater per capita than delivering them to populations in clusters.
In Ireland, the urbanisation rate is just 63 per cent, with 37 per cent of our population living outside of any town or village, and this high rate of dispersal increases the costs of delivering our public services by anywhere between 20 per cent and 40 per cent overall.
The single most significant thing Ireland could do to increase the quality and cost-effectiveness of our public services in the long term is to increase the number of people living in regional towns and villages. Our population continues to grow rapidly so an increase in the overall urbanisation rate could be quickly achieved simply by minimising the development of new housing outside of recognised urban centres.
Given the very small numbers proportionally who work in farming, forestry or fishing (less than 4 per cent of the workforce) there is no practical necessity in Ireland for our very dispersed living patterns. In fact, most non-urban residents commute into a town every day to work or school. The trend is entirely cultural, but as the business guru Peter Drucker famously observed, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and changing this will be no easy task. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THOMPSON,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.