South east- Ireland's forgotten region

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For all of you living here in the s east I'm sure this will come as no surprise whatso-ever. While we are 'percieved' as being a well-off region, the income figures released by the CSO tell a grim story.
We haven fallen even further behind the rest of the country, many so-called 'poorer' western counties are well ahead of us now in income terms.

Things will just have to change, I'm so sick of these surveys telling us what we already know and then no action from central government.
I mean, is a fair share of IDA support, a university and decent infrastructure just to much to ask for?

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Poor Carlovians - disposable income six from the bottom

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Poor Carlovians - disposable income six from the bottom
By: Eoin Weldon
CARLOW is the sixth poorest county in the country, a new survey has revealed.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) conducted a survey into what people have to spend after tax (disposable income) and found that 20 counties in the country have a higher disposable income than Carlow.


CEO of Carlow Chamber of Commerce, Jacqui McNabb, says there is not enough investment here at the moment. “I’ve spoken previously on the reliance we have here on the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. This represents low-level value chain activity when it comes to rates of wages.


“We have far less employment in other sectors which would generate more disposable incomes for people like the banking, financial and public administration sectors.”


She says that this investment is lacking in Carlow and more needs to be done to attract it. “We would like to see more foreign direct investment in Carlow. We have not had this in Carlow for 30 years and we need to properly utilise the IDA Park to improve the economy of Carlow.


“We need to get more companies to locate there because at the moment, local businesses are not allowed occupy any units in the park. These indigenous companies must be allowed there as they will stimulate the local economy.


“Without doubt, Carlow has proved its entrepreneurial spirit and we need to harness this,” she added.


Dublin has emerged as the wealthiest county with an average disposable income of •21,082, which is over •4,000 more a year than Carlow.


“We have a lot of highly qualified and educated graduates from Carlow and they are all going to Dublin because there is a lack of opportunities here for them. We must invest in high value jobs to attract these graduates and opening up the business park will serve this.


“If graduates find work in Dublin it means there is a lot of potential wealth being taken away from Carlow.”


She added that, although the economy in Carlow has undergone growth in recent years, there needs to be more improvement. “There has been a big growth in the retail sector, for example, but many of these positions are minimum wage and this will not impact greatly on the disposable income figures.


“We need to promote ourselves more and market the town as a viable place for investment.”


Fine Gael senator, Fergal Browne, says these are startling revelations: “Based on the figures, Carlow-Kilkenny is the poorest constituency not only in Leinster, but across the Midlands and in the South-East. Both Carlow and Kilkenny fall well beneath the national average of disposable income.”


He added that there is a problem of poverty in Carlow: “Carlow may be seen as a rich county and there are many prosperous people here but unfortunately there is also severe poverty. This poverty is especially experienced by families with children and by the elder-ly.”

emeraldstar

but this is mainly about carlow and, to a lesser extent, kilkenny...not the south-east as a whole???

il gatto

Sixth worst off? What about the other five? There's a fifth of the countrys counties worse off.

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il gatto wrote:

Sixth worst off? What about the other five? There's a fifth of the countrys counties worse off.

Kilkenny(5th worst off), Wexford and Carlow are in the bottom 10 of incomes as far as I remember form that CSO survey. My point is that so-called 'poor' counties like Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and a few other Western counties have higher per capita incomes than the majority of the s east counties; yet these counties are all still Objective 1 status which menas they get priority over us for structural funds and IDA supports- talk about injustice!
This is because these counties have, and always have had punched above their weights with ministerial representation; I know what I'm talking about here. How come a region with over 10% of the population gets just one Senior Minister (and we're even lucky to still have him!)?

Waterford and Tipperary are a bit higher in the income stakes, but not much more so either.

Dilbert75

First time I ever heard anyone say the SE was lucky to have the Minister for Fiction, Confusion and Press Releases, Martin Cullen.

As you say, this corner of the country has long been neglected - Wexford town must be close on Carlow in terms of lack of new industrial investment - and its largely down to weak politicians.

I can never understand how its beneficial to centralise industry in small pockets and then try to build infrastructure (or not as the case may be) to get people in and out, rather than put one factory in each town and keep people local.

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Dilbert75 wrote:

First time I ever heard anyone say the SE was lucky to have the Minister for Fiction, Confusion and Press Releases, Martin Cullen.

As you say, this corner of the country has long been neglected - Wexford town must be close on Carlow in terms of lack of new industrial investment - and its largely down to weak politicians.

I can never understand how its beneficial to centralise industry in small pockets and then try to build infrastructure (or not as the case may be) to get people in and out, rather than put one factory in each town and keep people local.

I'm not saying Cullen is great ( or any of this Cabinet for that matter) but at least he's from the region and as such is our only voice at the cabinet table. Case in point being the N9 road through the region- when he became Transport minister he got this put back on the NRA's proirity list, by at least two years. Better have Cullen in there, better than nothing which is what the region would have got otherwise.
The FF'ers in Carlow/Kilkenny are hopeless and there's not a snowballs chance of any of them getting a ministry. This is why I won't be voting FF here again incidently.
Remember back when Wexford had Howlin and Yates in office; decentralisation of Dept of Agri and EPA to Wexford, as well as much upgrading of the N25 nad N11;)

Dilbert75

I'm not saying Cullen is great

Cullen is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, 'cos he's taking up a seat and a Ministry that could be held by somebody useful. Not only can he not actually do anything convincingly, he can't even lie convincingly. In fact, even on the odd occasion when he might be telling the truth, he seems like he's lying. (As you can guess, I don't like him.)

Whatever anyone can say about the likes of Seamus Brennan, whether you agree with his policies, he does give the impression of having a focus and objectives to be achieved and being interested in achieving them.

Cullen's only objective seems to be to ride out whatever political storm he's created / facing at any one time, to get him through to the next election and another campaign which will only be successful because he's seen as a neglected region's only hope of getting to the cabinet table. That's hardly a rousing endorsement of his competence.

Incidentally, as far as I can see, he only looks after the people who vote him in. The N9 is important to people in Waterford - its benefit to Kilkenny people is incidental. So he prioritises it. The N25 New Ross bypass is of no concern to Waterford people - in fact the harder it is for Wexicans to get into Waterford, the happier the natives will be - so he's resisted all attempts to prioritise that project (though it finally seems to be making some progress, site investigations, etc). At least when Seamus Brennan got stuck in a traffic jam on the way into NR one Friday, he decided to find out what the hell was happening with the bypass and move it on to the planning stage.

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Dilbert75 wrote:

Cullen is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, 'cos he's taking up a seat and a Ministry that could be held by somebody useful. Not only can he not actually do anything convincingly, he can't even lie convincingly. In fact, even on the odd occasion when he might be telling the truth, he seems like he's lying. (As you can guess, I don't like him.)

Whatever anyone can say about the likes of Seamus Brennan, whether you agree with his policies, he does give the impression of having a focus and objectives to be achieved and being interested in achieving them.

Cullen's only objective seems to be to ride out whatever political storm he's created / facing at any one time, to get him through to the next election and another campaign which will only be successful because he's seen as a neglected region's only hope of getting to the cabinet table. That's hardly a rousing endorsement of his competence.

Incidentally, as far as I can see, he only looks after the people who vote him in. The N9 is important to people in Waterford - its benefit to Kilkenny people is incidental. So he prioritises it. The N25 New Ross bypass is of no concern to Waterford people - in fact the harder it is for Wexicans to get into Waterford, the happier the natives will be - so he's resisted all attempts to prioritise that project (though it finally seems to be making some progress, site investigations, etc). At least when Seamus Brennan got stuck in a traffic jam on the way into NR one Friday, he decided to find out what the hell was happening with the bypass and move it on to the planning stage.

I don't know much about Cullen re the Ross bypass- I don't agree that it's of no concern to Waterford though. The town is practically a dormitary of Waterford now, and the main link road to Rosslare passes threw it .I'm not from Waterford either so far from me to comment much on Cullen; was he PD once? And yes, Seamas Brennan was good, was surprised in fact when he was moved to Social Affairs.
The whole Monica-gate thing was pretty infuriating as a taxpayer, but for the e-voting the govt should have taken collective responsibilty for that.
The shame is there is no-one else in FF in either Carlow-KK, or Wexford is capable of holding down a ministry. I don't even know who the FF TDs from Wexford are- that says it all. However, the FG and Labour three have a high enough profile in both constituencies and hold out some of Ministeries for both if they get in. In my opinion FF governement have never been great for Kilkenny . They will take a hammering in this constituency, and will loose a seat here. As FF did in 2004, in the locals and europeans, they was practically a 'clear-out' of FF from the county council which was very satisfying indeed!! I see no reason why the GE '07 will be any different; their performance has actually got worse IMO since then.