The Irish Times

The future shape of Dublin and its hinterland will be set for decades to come by what happens in the next 10 years. That much is clear, whether or not Brian Hughes, lecturer in urban economics at the Dublin Institute of Technology, is correct in forecasting that it could have a population of 1.93 million by 2011.

But what is Dublin? As Dr Hughes sees it, the capital necessarily includes not only the historic city and county, but also Meath, Kildare and Wicklow. Together, they constitute what has become known as the Greater Dublin Area even though nobody in, say, Oldcastle, Co Meath, would see it that way. So it is not the case, as one newspaper report this week portrayed it, that Dublin - as a city - or even as a metropolitan area might have a population of nearly two million at the end of the next decade. What is true is that the eastern region, which already has a disproportionately large share of the Republic's population, will become more dominant.