45126-Invest. Qual-No111

Investment in QualityThe Council therefore welcomes the fact that the NSS has now beenpublished (Department of Environment and Local Government,2002b). The NSS sets out the explicit objective of providing anoverall national framework for dealing with spatial issues, within asustainable national economic and budgetary context and within an‘island of Ireland’ perspective, which can contribute to theenhancement of national competitiveness and a high qualityenvironment. In particular, the NSS is designed to improve theeffectiveness of public investment in infrastructure and otherrelevant services around the country.As noted in Section 9.1 our idea of spatial balance evolves over timeas the variety of centrifugal and centripetal forces in the economyand society change and interact. Over the last two centurieseconomies of scale and agglomerative forces have brought togetheractivity in the form of large manufacturing plants and extensivesettlement patterns, whereas activity prior to this was based arounda more micro-enterprise cottage industry approach. The informationrevolution, and the ability to conduct business in more remotelocations, with fewer transportation costs, and the ability forknowledge to traverse space more easily introduces opportunitiesfor business and settlement to become more dispersed again.The Council believes that a national spatial strategy should providea number of inputs to assist national development:●●●●It should provides a systematic analysis of spatial trends withinIreland over recent decades;It should add significantly to our knowledge of activities indifferent geographical areas and shed light on the relativeeconomic and social performance of each area;It should provide a template for the development of the countryover 20 years that provides a balanced approach across allsectors and regions;It should propose a coherent strategy for managing the spatialdimension of Ireland’s economy and society, focusing on thedevelopment of a number of strategic locations for certain kindsof investment; and446