Italy has spent years trying to persuade people to move to its smaller towns. Ireland is approaching the question from another direction: making it easier for people to stay where they already live.
As Harry McGee reported in The Irish Times on 27 October, the Irish government has launched a new rural development strategy focused on transport, digital connectivity, employment and everyday services.
One figure is particularly revealing. Ireland now has approximately 420 digital working hubs, according to the figures cited by Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
A separate National Hub Network Strategy for 2026–2030 outlines 36 measures intended to strengthen the system.
This is considerably more interesting than opening another coworking space.
Ireland is attempting to make remote working part of its territorial infrastructure, alongside broadband, public transport and services for businesses.
The difference matters.
For years, discussions about remote work concentrated on whether employees should spend two or three days in the office. The geographical consequences received considerably less attention.
Yet the possibility of working away from a corporate headquarters can fundamentally change the relationship between employment and residence.
A professional living in a smaller community no longer necessarily needs to commute daily to a major city. A local entrepreneur may gain access to professional facilities without relocating the business. A community can retain economic activity that would otherwise disappear.
But a building with desks and an internet connection is not automatically a development policy.
The sustainability of these hubs depends on their actual use, the services they provide and their ability to connect with local businesses and institutions.
This is where Italy could learn something.
The country possesses an enormous stock of underused public and private buildings: former schools, municipal offices, railway premises and commercial properties in historic centres.
Many could accommodate professional activities. Some already do.
What is often missing is the coordinated system that makes individual initiatives recognisable, accessible and economically sustainable.
Italy has also become rather enthusiastic about attracting digital nomads, sometimes treating them as an answer to demographic decline. The approach has merit, but visitors and temporary residents cannot substitute for a functioning local economy.
Ireland’s strategy raises a more fundamental question: what if the first objective of territorial development were not attracting newcomers, but removing the reasons existing residents feel compelled to leave?
Housing matters. So do schools, healthcare, transport and the possibility of pursuing a career without abandoning one’s community.
Remote working can support this transformation, provided it is treated as an economic instrument rather than a lifestyle slogan.
The Irish experience does not yet prove that every hub delivers measurable benefits. It does, however, demonstrate what becomes possible when individual initiatives are connected through a national strategy.
The ITALIC View
Italy has become exceptionally good at marketing the dream of moving to a small town. Ireland is investing in the practical conditions that allow people to remain in one. Perhaps the future of regional development depends less on persuading people to relocate and more on giving them fewer reasons to leave.