Ireland showed little interest in regional or physical planning before the 1960s. The satirical columnist Myles na Gopaleen commented that ‘the whole country lacks the population that would sustain even the fraction of “planning” that is proper to the temperament and economy of this country … The problem to be addressed here is simply that of the falling birth-rate’. Economic development changed the picture, creating new pressures on housing and infrastructure in areas with a growing population and industrial investment, and, paradoxically, even greater pressures from areas where the population was still declining. Ireland, accustomed to population decline and economic stagnation, was ill-equipped to cope with a rising population, industrial development and shortages of houses, office blocks and other trappings of modern life.

Despite efforts to devise measures that would enable small farms to survive, the 1960s brought a growing recognition that manufacturing industry offered a more reliable lifeline to rural Ireland. The spread of industry into small towns, where factories were unknown, changed the culture of communities that were previously dominated by farming. New industries were welcome because they provided much-wanted jobs and their arrival helped to modify some of the traditional prejudices of rural families against factory work. Farmers hoped that children who did not inherit the farm would find work in secure occupations such as the gardaí, nursing, teaching and public service. A 1960 study of rural families in the neighbourhood of the Shannon industrial estate found that they aspired to see their children in white-collar, public service jobs, despite the fact that nearby factories were hiring workers. By the end of the decade, attitudes were changing; Damien Hannan, who surveyed adolescents in Cavan – a predominantly rural county – in 1965 and again three years later, reported a more positive attitude towards factory work in 1968 among farmers’ sons, though not daughters: ‘factory girls’ were believed to have less promising marriage prospects; in some instances, local boys were reported as refusing to dance with them. This attitude was not unique to Ireland; French farmers also kept their daughters at school longer than sons and hoped that they would leave the land.

A study of Scariff and Tubbercurry – two small towns in Clare and Sligo – suggested that industrial development offered the best prospect for stabilising the rural population.