“Roscrea Is Full” says the sign held up by residents of the North Tipperary town protesting against the housing of asylum seekers in Racket Hall hotel. The population of Roscrea in 1841 was 9,000. Today it is 5,542. If it’s full today, what was it before the Famine? Was it good to get rid of those “excess” people?
Last year, Tipperary County Council held meetings, conducted focus groups and carried out a survey of local residents as part of a public consultation on plans to regenerate Roscrea. One of the findings was “consensus on the need to tackle vacancy and dereliction”. According to the report, “vacancy and dereliction within the town centre was continually highlighted at every event”.
Vacancy is, I believe, the precise opposite of fullness. There is in fact plenty of empty space within the town: the 5.3 hectare site of the former Antigen factory on Lourdes Road has been unoccupied for years. So have Grant’s Hotel, which has been disused since 2013, and the old Sacred Heart Convent.
The vacancy rate for properties within the town is indeed much higher than the average in the county and in Ireland as a whole. At the last count, in March 2023, 51 of the 315 commercial premises in Roscrea were empty and a further eight were characterised as derelict. There are boarded-up shop fronts on the lovely old streets. Much of the historic centre of the town, Main Street and Castle Street, is blighted by abandoned buildings.
[ ‘Both sides have right’: Asylum seekers living in Roscrea share objectors’ concerns on consultation ]
The most recent count of vacant houses I can find goes back to the 2016 census, but at that time 14 per cent of residential units in Roscrea were unoccupied.
Historically, Roscrea’s big problem is not overpopulation. It’s depopulation. On April 6th, 1904, in its Notes and News column from Roscrea, the Leinster Leader reported: “The emigration season is with us once again. The annual exodus has begun and the same sad parting scenes and touching farewells are to be witnessed at our railway stations. The people are flying from the land as if it were plague-stricken. And we fear the drain will be on a much larger scale this year than heretofore.”
Roscrea needs vision, investment, development. It needs a positive story about its future in which a rising population is not bad news
This is not ancient memory. In August 1988, an emigrant advice centre was opened in Nenagh, half an hour from Roscrea. As the Nenagh Guardian reported: “emigration has sadly become one of the harsh realities in almost every home in the country today. Most of those who leave usually go unprepared and end up being exploited in a land where they know nobody or nothing… When one considers the vast numbers of young people leaving north Tipperary alone the centre is bound to be inundated with requests for advice”.
Roscrea’s population continued to decline during the 1990s. But it began to recover around the beginning of the 21st century. Over the last 20 years, it has risen by 21 per cent. Most of this rise was due to inward migration. Just over 16 per cent of the town’s population identified as “non-Irish national” in the 2016 Census, with particularly significant numbers coming from Poland and Lithuania.
[ Concerns of many Roscrea locals addressed by new community hotel plan ]
Immigration coincided with rising educational standards in the town. In 2006, an extraordinary 23 per cent of Roscrea people had either no formal education or primary education only. By 2016, that had dropped to 18 per cent.
The proportion of Roscrea’s school-leavers going on to third-level education likewise increased from 51 per cent in 2007 to 67 per cent in 2019. University entrance from the town’s schools doubled from below 15 per cent in 2007 to 32 per cent in 2019.
Roscrea’s problem isn’t that it’s “full”. Its difficulties are not to do with what has come in but with what has left: people and jobs. Roscrea used to have a thriving industrial base but it has been wiped out, leaving many families stranded. The empty Antigen site, where 300 people used to work, is emblematic of that desertion.
There are boarded-up shop fronts on the lovely old streets. Much of the historic centre of the town, Main Street and Castle Street, is blighted by abandoned buildings
Of the 26 areas that make up Roscrea Electoral Division, four were defined in 2016 as “very disadvantaged” and a further six as “disadvantaged”. These areas contained 40 per cent of the town’s population.
A report prepared in 2020 for Tusla and North Tipperary Development Company found that “there was a general sense that the town has been forgotten about and let down with the lack of investment, the poor job opportunities, the lack of full-time services in the town with the onus on families to travel outside for support with very limited public transport options… Respondents talked about the closed shop fronts, the lack of seating around the town and the poor state of the streets.”
[ Bishops remind Roscrea that ‘we Irish, more than most, know what it is like to be a stranger in a foreign land’ ]
It’s easy, in that context, to understand why people would be upset about the loss of the town’s only functioning hotel, a place used for active retirement groups and wedding and Communion parties. Roscrea, a historic town set in a beautiful landscape, should have a thriving tourist business but doesn’t. Effectively closing its main facility for would-be visitors sends a message that it’s not going to develop such an industry in the future either.
Like so many towns and communities in Ireland, Roscrea needs vision, investment, development. It needs a positive story about its future in which a rising population is not bad news and the ability to attract migrants is a source of pride and energy rather than fear and suspicion. It’s in the absence of such a story that the sour narratives of no room at the inn can be spun.
[ Roscrea protests: ‘We can’t get medical appointments, so we can’t take any more, but we don’t want any far right activists here’ ]
“Roscrea is full”, like the “Ireland is full” slogan of which it is a sub-species, is utterly absurd. Ireland’s population density is 73 people per square kilometre, compared with the EU average of 109.
But when the country is underdeveloped and overdeveloped at the same time, it can also feel simultaneously underpopulated and overpopulated. Life on the ground seems disconnected from the big story of national growth. When things don’t make sense, senseless ideas can take hold.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Rami G Khouri
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
