A blueprint for Mayo's future is clearly set out by the OECD, so let's take notice

The OECD does not do flattery.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development tells governments uncomfortable truths, that their pension systems are unsustainable, their tax codes inefficient and that their education systems are underperforming.

Boffins are not in the business of reassurance.

Which is why the Rural Policy Review of Ireland 2026 is worth sitting with.

It’s a landmark report that tells us that Mayo and rural Ireland broadly is not the story of a forgotten, declining region, despite what many whingers would have you believe.

Ireland has the second-highest rural population growth rate among all OECD countries.

Rural regions here have delivered above-average GDP growth for two decades. We see this in real terms with recent news of our European region transitioning towards being ‘a more developed region’.

We are moving in the right direction developmentally.

That should be applauded. Mayo makes an important contribution to this story of rural success.

The OECD singles out “the Botox manufacturing plant in Westport, operated by Allergan/AbbVie” as a prime illustration of how foreign direct investment can take genuine root in rural Ireland.

Westport is cited as a global model of rural FDI success. Not a regional Irish model. A global one.

When an organisation advising 38 of the world’s most advanced economies uses Mayo as an example of what works internationally, that should be a cause for pride.

None of this means there are no problems. There are real ones.

But this is precisely where the document becomes most useful, because it separates genuine, addressable challenges from guttural grievances, and details solutions for what to do.

Much like how Westport will be used as a successful model for other nations, where we lack, we can learn from global best practices.

The housing crisis, believe it or not, is our Achilles heel.

The report is direct: housing is not a social issue to be slapped onto the side of economic policy.

Housing should be viewed as core economic infrastructure. Where people cannot find somewhere to live, employers cannot fill vacancies and enterprises cannot grow.

A 2024 study cited in the report found that housing constraints were among the top three deterrents to enterprise expansion across Ireland’s western and rural regions.

Our employers are struggling to recruit not because they are in the wrong place, but because affordable accommodation nearby does not exist.

The cause finds its clearest local voice in the words of Councillor Brendan Mulroy who has bemoaned the ‘imaginary line’ that makes planning nigh on impossible in rural Mayo, warning of the knock-on impact on rural national schools if young couples are told their ‘housing need’ is already met within the nearest urban area.

The report echoes that frustration. Ours, it argues, is a housing system designed around urban demand, and the numbers bear this out.

Nearly 60% of annual completions are concentrated in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, while counties in the west record the lowest new starts in the country.

The National Planning Framework's compact growth model, well-intentioned on environmental grounds, has in practice constrained smaller settlements that already have labour demand but nowhere to build.

For rural communities, this isn't just a policy failure; it is the reality of planning refusals landing on the kitchen table and national school principals telling parents that they're set to lose another teacher and GAA committees querying what to call their new three-parish amalgamated club.

By then, the young couples forced away by planners are gone; so too are the employers who were first to feel the shallow labour pool.

So what do the policy wonks offer as a solution? Link housing delivery to employment demand. Vacancy reuse programmes should target settlements experiencing labour shortages.

When an employer in Westport or Castlebar identifies a recruitment problem rooted in housing, that should trigger a housing response from our local authority.

The OECD points to Finland, where they have built exactly this through ‘Regional Housing Observatories’ that forecast demand based on where jobs actually are.

Invest in water and wastewater infrastructure first.

A job of work has been done in this regard thus far, but the report highlights that wastewater capacity limits are directly blocking housing and enterprise development in small towns and villages across rural Ireland.

Councillor Chris Maxwell has lamented this in Louisburgh, and the sorry saga in Newport compounds this further.

Investment must follow housing and jobs plans, not be a Dublin diktat that will lead us into 3-hour daily commutes.

Give local authorities the tools to act. Irish local government is among the most fiscally constrained in the OECD.

Subnational revenues were just 10.6% of total public revenue in 2020; the EU average is 46.6%.

The plan calls on the likes of Mayo County Council to be more than an implementer of centrally designed schemes; instead base its own growth on local economic data.

Introduce a Rural Housing Enabler, an idea borrowed from England and Wales, where dedicated specialists unblock delivery problems across local authority boundaries.

In a county with Mayo’s geographic scale and dispersed settlement patterns, this could be the difference between a grant that exists on paper and one that delivers homes. The work of the Gaeltacht vacant homes coordinator Colm Mac Eachmharcaigh shows us that a plan here is in the offing.

The OECD report offers an opportunity to change the terms of debate. For too long, the conversation has been organised around grievance, that rural areas are left behind, and that Dublin gets everything.

There is truth in parts of that. But it has become a habit that crowds out the more productive question: given what we have, what do we build?

Mayo has a world-class pharmaceutical plant cited by the OECD as a global model. It has some of the strongest renewable energy potential in Europe, a young population by international standards, and an Atlantic Technological University campus connecting it to the bioeconomy and green transition.

The international verdict proves that rural Ireland is not stuck in the past; we're built for the future.

It has long been my view that rural Ireland doesn’t have a housing crisis, it has a major vacancy and dereliction problem.

The grants are there, but that idea of a rural housing enabler, a community organisation that identifies sites, sends surveys to diaspora and local people to cite demand and helps to sort sites in local rural areas for builders to develop, should be worked upon with haste alongside the exploration of community housing.

Do not underestimate the impact of this report. What the OECD says, our government follow.

There is a blueprint there to follow because Mayo, with quality, affordable homes, will be an engine of growth for Ireland and not the poor relation.