THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
I realise I’m skating on thin ice, being an urban man writing for a relatively rural readership, when it comes to commenting on Leo Varadkar’s statement about who pays for, and who gets more from, services in this country. Remarks that have caused more than a modicum of controversy.
He told Newstalk’s Matt Cooper: “People in rural Ireland are very quick to tell people in urban Ireland that ‘we’re the real workers, we’re the ones paying all the bills, we’re the ones feeding the country’.
“I think we maybe need to be a little bit more blunt in urban Ireland and say, actually that’s not the case. We’re the ones paying all the bills and you’re the ones in receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don’t get,” the former Taoiseach said.
Now he has backed down, saying he likely “overstated” his remarks, and has apologised. Critics condemned the comments as divisive, even speculated on the amount of cows the former Taoiseach would be able to milk, and, in the case of one MEP, mounted a numbers-laden defence of farmers.
So, let’s see ..
A Central Statistics Office (CSO) survey, this 21st of April, shows that more than 63% of the Irish population live in urban areas, including cities and towns, while another 15.9% live in “rural areas with moderate urban influence”.
The CSO’s data shows that there is no county in Ireland which does not have an urban population. The county with the lowest proportion of urban dwellers appears to be Leitrim at 15.9%, though some of these people may casually describe themselves to be living in “rural Ireland”.
Some of the backlash against Varadkar’s statements might seem to suggest that rural Ireland consists solely of farmers and farms.
A 2023 survey of farms from the CSO puts the total number of farm workers at 299,700 – only 10% of all workers – and almost half of these said farming was not their only job.
Farming’s contribution to the rural economy is even less pronounced. If we look at it in terms of Gross Value Added, GVA is the value of outputs minus the cost of inputs. Or, in simpler terms, the money made overall.
Agriculture makes up just 4.3% of GVA in the Midlands and lower everywhere else in the country, zero in the Dublin region. Even just in areas that are categorised as “highly rural/remote”, farming makes up just 10.4% of earned income.
In economic terms, there is no region where “agriculture, forestry and fishing” creates more money than industry. In other words, we should not conflate “rural” Ireland with farmers, nor the “rural” economy with farming.
Data from the Survey on Income & Living Conditions shows disposable income in 2024 at the highest value in urban towns at €36,981 and the lowest in rural/remote areas at €24,636.
So then, who pays more taxes, urban areas or rural areas?
The Revenue Commissioners publish detailed tax data yearly and by geographic area but the geographic areas they use are counties, but doesn’t say whether farming or industry driven.
For example, we know from this data set that in 2024 €2.3Bn was collected in Co Galway. But we know nothing of how much of that was in Galway city versus the rest of the county, or how much was produced in smaller towns or the countryside.
Dublin, the most urbanised county, according to the CSO, had a total tax intake of €44.149Bn in 2024, or about €30,277 a person.
Leitrim, the most rural county according to the CSO, has a tax intake of €312 million, which works out at about €8,852 a person.
Irish financial figures can be somewhat tainted by corporation taxes. But, even removing this factor, Dublin still comes out on top, with €20,563 a person versus said Leitrim’s €8,210. That is consistent with Varadkar’s claim. He’s right when he says the population of Dublin, the most urban county, pays significantly above the Irish average relative to its population.
The overall reaction to the fuel protest blockades saw some politicians were so slow to offend anyone that, too often, they’d rather have said nothing or talked around the issue. Having a former politician call it as he sees it is, arguably, a good and healthy thing. But instead of looking at what Leo Varadkar said, we get the backlash, the rush to judgement and then his climbdown and apology.
And so it’s back to any other business …
