MEP says Midlands needs ‘less cap in hand politics and more confidence in what we can build’

Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Cowen has called for a fundamental change in how Ireland approaches balanced regional development, arguing that the Midlands should be given the infrastructure to generate its own growth rather than relying on growth and investment being redistributed from elsewhere.

Cowen made the comments in a keynote address to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland’s Midlands North-West Conference in Galway last night, where he argued that the region has the businesses, universities, renewable energy resources and international investment necessary to drive its own economic development.

The Midlands North-West MEP said Ireland's transformation since joining the then EEC in 1973 should be reflected in a more confident approach to regional development. Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU, sits at the heart of the Single Market and currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Cowen argued that national and European investment remain essential, but politicians should move away from a culture of overpromising grants and funding and focus instead on delivering the long-term conditions required for regions to grow.

Political representatives in Brussels should, for example, spend less time overpromising access to individual EU grants over which they often have little direct control, and more time ensuring the conditions for regional investment are in place through less red tape, protected funding streams and better infrastructure, Cowen said.

Speaking at the event, he said: “For too long, when we spoke about balanced regional development, we tended to speak about it almost as an act of redistribution. How do we take growth happening elsewhere and spread some of it around?

“I think that fundamentally undersells this region. The Midlands, West and North-West aren't looking for somebody else's growth. We have the capacity to generate our own.

“That is why I am increasingly uncomfortable with a strain of politics that approaches regional development with the ‘cap in hand’. Every problem apparently has a grant somewhere to solve it, every project a European fund waiting in Brussels and every politician a promise that they will go and secure it.

“Of course we should fight tooth and nail for our fair share of national and European investment. But the conversation should not always begin with ‘what can we get?’ It should increasingly begin with ‘what can we build?’

“We have world-class universities, globally significant medtech and life-sciences clusters, strong indigenous businesses, major American employers and renewable energy resources that most European regions could only dream of.

“The challenge is ensuring we have the infrastructure to turn those advantages into further investment and jobs.”

In his speech to the American Chamber of Commerce, Cowen identified energy, housing, transport, planning and port infrastructure as interconnected economic challenges for the Midlands and North-West, arguing that infrastructure traditionally viewed primarily through the lens of households is increasingly central to attracting and retaining international investment.

He said that businesses require affordable and reliable electricity to power factories and transport infrastructure to move goods, but also housing and functioning transport networks so that employees can afford to live close to their workplace and commute reliably.

Cowen welcomed the Government's Critical Infrastructure Bill as well as Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan's proposed reforms to judicial review, citing the decades-long experience of the Galway Ring Road as an example of a planning and legal system which has become incapable of reaching final decisions on major infrastructure within reasonable timeframes.

The Fianna Fáil MEP also argued that the Midlands, West and North-West should benefit directly from the economic opportunities created by the region's renewable energy potential, including through attracting new investment in advanced manufacturing, life sciences, data and green fuels.

“If the West of Ireland is going to become one of the country's great generators of renewable electricity, then the region should have first call on the economic opportunity that comes with it.

“Instead of simply asking how we transmit every available megawatt eastwards, we should be asking: what can we build here because the energy is here?

“That is what balanced regional development should mean. Not compensating regions for being peripheral, but giving them the infrastructure to exploit the advantages they already possess.”

Cowen concluded by arguing that the same approach is required on international trade and competitiveness, warning against an increasingly “performative” politics in which every challenge is labelled a crisis and every compromise a sell-out.

“Good politics is rarely loud politics. It is about making difficult decisions, negotiating compromises, fixing systems that don't work and then being willing to stand over the result.

“For decades, balanced regional development has been something every political party says it supports. The test now is who is actually prepared to make the decisions necessary to deliver it.

“Give the Midlands and North-West the infrastructure to compete, open new markets and then allow the extraordinary businesses and people already here, and those still to come, to do the rest.

“The ambition is here, the investment is here and the energy is here. Our job in politics is to make sure the conditions for growth are here too.”