International experience suggests that strategic spatial planning has the potential to underpin the delivery of effective public services and enhance the capacity for economic growth at national, regional and subregional levels (Albrechts, 2010). Strategic spatial planning, over the course of the past twenty years, has become increasingly central to social and economic development in many European countries and indeed the EU. Influenced by these developments, the publication of the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002-2020 (NSS) in 2002 provided a response to the growing imbalances in socio-economic development that became increasingly evident during the Celtic tiger period in the late 1990s. The strategy represented a departure from conventional planning in Ireland by taking a more holistic perspective of changing geographies of population, settlement patterns and the distribution of employment opportunities. The implications of these changes led to the proposition of a socio-economic planning model that recognised the importance of the spatial dimension.