Regional Growth and Income Patterns, 1960-65

into regional income and employment patterns in Ireland and to the appearance of the Buchanan Report in 1969. These works have laid much of the groundwork for future regional studies, but they have one basic methodological feature which may have outlived its usefulness for regional analysis in Ireland. This is the choice of the Irish county as the basic regional unit for analysis. This approach has had the merit of focussing attention on the economic problems of particular areas, such as the Western counties; yet it may have obscured the wider study of the relative economic performance and interrelationships of the economic regions in this country. It is the author's view that it is now necessary to adopt the "economic regions " approach in analysing Irish regional development; and it is his purpose to examine the spatial patterns of income growth in 1960-65: Certain techniques of regional analysis will be applied to the data to see whether they have anything to contribute to regional development policy. This paper examines the growth patterns of regional income per head. A second paper will undertake a detailed analysis of the changing structure of regional employment. A test will b