Concern about the decline of rural Ireland didn’t start in the 1950s. Today’s neglect of the northwest region had origins in the colonial period of British rule and deteriorated after the 1801 Act of Union. This trapped Ireland in a union chosen by a tiny governing minority.
Rebellions and background community violence discouraged British investment in Irish infrastructure and industry, resulting in a badly planned, dispersed pattern of population settlements. Shocking underdevelopment of the Atlantic seaboard turned a regional famine into the catastrophic Great Famine of 1845-47, with demographic consequences enduring to this day.
As land wars escalated in the late 1800s, the British Government belatedly made an effort to address the depressed state of the Irish western seaboard, which had become detached from the modestly growing prosperity of the rest of the island. Due to its isolation, Irish had remained the dominant spoken language.
The Congested Districts Board (CDB) was set up in 1891, given a budget by the British Parliament, a wide remit over development issues and an independent governing board of energetic people. It was a kind of Enterprise Ireland, but targeted on a region that had very distinct challenges across interacting social, economic and business issues.
In 1923, the Free State government had two options. It could reform the CDB, give it a catchier title and recognise that the Atlantic seaboard urgently needed a targeted and integrated policy mix........

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