It’s the “ah feck it, it’ll be grand” attitude. Instead of things being done properly, a lot of things throughout society are done in a very half arsed manner.
In the capital, the lack of high rises (so the NIMBYs can protect their precious skyline) makes the city feel very under-developed.
> AN OFFER WITH A NICE RING TO IT.
The paper of record
The problem with the wealth is it’s not evenly distributed at all, and the gap between those who have and those who have not grows wider with each passing day. Worse, both sides seem to struggle to accept the fact their stance is not shared by the other side, AND both sides are constantly pit against each other, rather than towards the people causing the issues.
Edit: for the record, I’ve started just blocking the usual suspects who always, always enter into threads with their heads up the governments ass. There’s four or five posters on here who are blatantly in every single thread, arguing on behalf of Leo and his ilk, and I don’t believe they act in good faith. There’s only so many times I can have the same arguement with the same lads who refuse to ever accept even the basic of criticisms against the way the government has handled everything.
McWilliams gets a lot wrong there. Our trains are not ancient and the Dun laoghaire to Dundalk service is almost certainly comprised of modern DMU units. The tracks are new too, all continuously welded rail.
He calls our housing construction second rate, when in fact a large part of the cost of building is due to the extremely high standards we demand of new builds, all must be A2 now.
Ireland has an accommodation shortage because of an industrial policy that required a talent pool that was not native to this country and secondly not planning for the baby boom of the 80’s reaching home buying age.
It’s a really poor take tbh.
Our infrastructure is not great and our public transport is extremely slow. Our planning is just pathetic and more suited to an underperforming undeveloped country.
Am I the only one here without a subscription to the Irish Times ?
I think the reason for this in my opinion is that Ireland is essentially a rich country that had only recently gotten rich. Most other rich countries in Europe got wealthy in the 50s/60s while Ireland got rich in the 90s.
Nepotism. Poor infrastructure and planning. Low interest in politics. Poor leadership, only advisory decisions most of which on a European level.
1) Ridiculously bureaucratic and slow planning processes, designed to ass-cover by politicians and civil servants if anything goes wrong. You need regulation and processes obviously, but we’ve gone way too far, and it’s killing our ability to build infrastructure.
2) The electoral cycle in Ireland is 5 years. Governments do little to improve their re-election chances if they invest billions in plans that will greatly improve life in 7-10 years’ time. They’re incentivised to throw around tax cuts and increases in current spending, and unfortunately Irish people are partly to blame as they demand this.
If Ireland was rich we’d be building a hell of a lot more infrastructure. All I see being built is corporate offices and data centres for foreign company’s. The motorway linking Limerick and Cork should have been fast tracked, that’s been approved and still is in the planning process, all the old folk in the county councils refuse planning permission and object to anything because of the sky line.
Just import a taoiseach and a proper political party from somewhere serious like Germany or Denmark already … let’s be honest current government’s strong suit is definitely not leadership
Can’t listen to McWilliams anymore. I used to respect him. He’s severely out of touch.
Always wondered this. I often see Ireland referred to as a wealthy nation but are we not in debt to the tune of roughly €230bn? And is this Debt Clock I’m about to link here absolute horse shit? http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock/
Coincidentally, it’s a very long time since I’ve looked at that site and it’s the first time I’ve actually witnessed it coming down instead of up.
Can’t ye not post articles that are essentially paywalled?
It’s really annoying
The moneys there, it’s just being hoarded and ignored, Leo calls it the rainy day fund, then there’s TD wage increases.
That’s because our “wealth” is not actually ours. It has been inflated by corporation’s like Apple and Google moving their wealth to offices here as to avail to the low taxes Ireland provides. And the only people with access to that wealth are those companies themselves.
I’m getting sick to death of this fucking narrative, and I’ve been sick of David McWilliams for a very long time. Irish infrastructure is middle of the pack for a country of our size, our economy, our “level of development”. It’s limited because we are small, and because Ireland is a country that became rich very very recently. Literally within my lifetime and I’m thirty.
Ireland is not comparable to Switzerland or Norway, which have VAST income reserves and almost no economic instability for decades. It’s also not comparable to the declining world industrial powers like the US and the UK that have had three hundred years to build on.
I wonder do Icelandic people sit around whinging about how embarrassing it is that they have no train lines and no public transportation and their banks fucked everything up and they have to rely on tourism? And to the people acting as though the North gets it right and we don’t — sorry what? You actually think the roads are so much better up there? Have you visited in the last my-entire-lifetime? You think the Stormont government is a standup example of democracy in action? Enjoy your cheap groceries at Asda I guess.
Ireland has so many problems to fix but it’s BULLSHIT to think that we’re uniquely failing with all the opportunity on earth. Ireland can do better on a lot of things, just like the entire every other country in the world. We are not inherently inferior.
I’m tired of being told that I have to choose between pretending everything is perfect and aren’t we great and so clever and look at how brilliant we are, and this narrative that we are doomed to perpetual failure because of some kind of natural inability to run ourselves. I’m proud to be Irish and glad to be Irish, and I still want them to do something about the fucking housing crisis and dissolve the useless HSE.
TLDR: if you’re pointing on a map going “well that lot have it sorted, Ireland is so embarrassing”, you’re delusional.
Two Tier economy, that’s why. We have one populated by transnational corporations and then the actual Irish economy most people live under, which is nowhere near as wealthy. Once the first one fecks off, and it will eventually, we’ll see how wealthy Ireland really is.
When you visit other countries considered a lot poorer than us and see their transport system you can’t help but be disappointed in our successive governments. The country as a whole will never develop until we get decent transport, it’ll just be Dublin, Dublin, Dublin…let’s pump more money into Dublin; and Dublin’s transport system is shite as well. That being said we don’t have any raw materials to sell to the world like other countries do which would make things easier, plus we’re not as rich as sometimes stated due to the many large corporations based here inflating our GDP yet paying very low tax. We don’t see most of the profits.
Sandra and the sallynoggin senioriatas
Tallaght Timmy and the sausage roll aficionados
Ireland is wealthy, but it’s like that person you know who’s loaded but won’t spend it, who penny pinches at every opportunity, but then splashes out of absolutely stupid things.
21 comments
It’s the “ah feck it, it’ll be grand” attitude. Instead of things being done properly, a lot of things throughout society are done in a very half arsed manner.
In the capital, the lack of high rises (so the NIMBYs can protect their precious skyline) makes the city feel very under-developed.
> AN OFFER WITH A NICE RING TO IT.
The paper of record
The problem with the wealth is it’s not evenly distributed at all, and the gap between those who have and those who have not grows wider with each passing day. Worse, both sides seem to struggle to accept the fact their stance is not shared by the other side, AND both sides are constantly pit against each other, rather than towards the people causing the issues.
Edit: for the record, I’ve started just blocking the usual suspects who always, always enter into threads with their heads up the governments ass. There’s four or five posters on here who are blatantly in every single thread, arguing on behalf of Leo and his ilk, and I don’t believe they act in good faith. There’s only so many times I can have the same arguement with the same lads who refuse to ever accept even the basic of criticisms against the way the government has handled everything.
McWilliams gets a lot wrong there. Our trains are not ancient and the Dun laoghaire to Dundalk service is almost certainly comprised of modern DMU units. The tracks are new too, all continuously welded rail.
He calls our housing construction second rate, when in fact a large part of the cost of building is due to the extremely high standards we demand of new builds, all must be A2 now.
Ireland has an accommodation shortage because of an industrial policy that required a talent pool that was not native to this country and secondly not planning for the baby boom of the 80’s reaching home buying age.
It’s a really poor take tbh.
Our infrastructure is not great and our public transport is extremely slow. Our planning is just pathetic and more suited to an underperforming undeveloped country.
Am I the only one here without a subscription to the Irish Times ?
I think the reason for this in my opinion is that Ireland is essentially a rich country that had only recently gotten rich. Most other rich countries in Europe got wealthy in the 50s/60s while Ireland got rich in the 90s.
Nepotism. Poor infrastructure and planning. Low interest in politics. Poor leadership, only advisory decisions most of which on a European level.
1) Ridiculously bureaucratic and slow planning processes, designed to ass-cover by politicians and civil servants if anything goes wrong. You need regulation and processes obviously, but we’ve gone way too far, and it’s killing our ability to build infrastructure.
2) The electoral cycle in Ireland is 5 years. Governments do little to improve their re-election chances if they invest billions in plans that will greatly improve life in 7-10 years’ time. They’re incentivised to throw around tax cuts and increases in current spending, and unfortunately Irish people are partly to blame as they demand this.
If Ireland was rich we’d be building a hell of a lot more infrastructure. All I see being built is corporate offices and data centres for foreign company’s. The motorway linking Limerick and Cork should have been fast tracked, that’s been approved and still is in the planning process, all the old folk in the county councils refuse planning permission and object to anything because of the sky line.
Just import a taoiseach and a proper political party from somewhere serious like Germany or Denmark already … let’s be honest current government’s strong suit is definitely not leadership
Can’t listen to McWilliams anymore. I used to respect him. He’s severely out of touch.
Always wondered this. I often see Ireland referred to as a wealthy nation but are we not in debt to the tune of roughly €230bn? And is this Debt Clock I’m about to link here absolute horse shit? http://www.financedublin.com/debtclock/
Coincidentally, it’s a very long time since I’ve looked at that site and it’s the first time I’ve actually witnessed it coming down instead of up.
Can’t ye not post articles that are essentially paywalled?
It’s really annoying
The moneys there, it’s just being hoarded and ignored, Leo calls it the rainy day fund, then there’s TD wage increases.
That’s because our “wealth” is not actually ours. It has been inflated by corporation’s like Apple and Google moving their wealth to offices here as to avail to the low taxes Ireland provides. And the only people with access to that wealth are those companies themselves.
I’m getting sick to death of this fucking narrative, and I’ve been sick of David McWilliams for a very long time. Irish infrastructure is middle of the pack for a country of our size, our economy, our “level of development”. It’s limited because we are small, and because Ireland is a country that became rich very very recently. Literally within my lifetime and I’m thirty.
Ireland is not comparable to Switzerland or Norway, which have VAST income reserves and almost no economic instability for decades. It’s also not comparable to the declining world industrial powers like the US and the UK that have had three hundred years to build on.
I wonder do Icelandic people sit around whinging about how embarrassing it is that they have no train lines and no public transportation and their banks fucked everything up and they have to rely on tourism? And to the people acting as though the North gets it right and we don’t — sorry what? You actually think the roads are so much better up there? Have you visited in the last my-entire-lifetime? You think the Stormont government is a standup example of democracy in action? Enjoy your cheap groceries at Asda I guess.
Ireland has so many problems to fix but it’s BULLSHIT to think that we’re uniquely failing with all the opportunity on earth. Ireland can do better on a lot of things, just like the entire every other country in the world. We are not inherently inferior.
I’m tired of being told that I have to choose between pretending everything is perfect and aren’t we great and so clever and look at how brilliant we are, and this narrative that we are doomed to perpetual failure because of some kind of natural inability to run ourselves. I’m proud to be Irish and glad to be Irish, and I still want them to do something about the fucking housing crisis and dissolve the useless HSE.
TLDR: if you’re pointing on a map going “well that lot have it sorted, Ireland is so embarrassing”, you’re delusional.
Two Tier economy, that’s why. We have one populated by transnational corporations and then the actual Irish economy most people live under, which is nowhere near as wealthy. Once the first one fecks off, and it will eventually, we’ll see how wealthy Ireland really is.
When you visit other countries considered a lot poorer than us and see their transport system you can’t help but be disappointed in our successive governments. The country as a whole will never develop until we get decent transport, it’ll just be Dublin, Dublin, Dublin…let’s pump more money into Dublin; and Dublin’s transport system is shite as well. That being said we don’t have any raw materials to sell to the world like other countries do which would make things easier, plus we’re not as rich as sometimes stated due to the many large corporations based here inflating our GDP yet paying very low tax. We don’t see most of the profits.
Sandra and the sallynoggin senioriatas
Tallaght Timmy and the sausage roll aficionados
Ireland is wealthy, but it’s like that person you know who’s loaded but won’t spend it, who penny pinches at every opportunity, but then splashes out of absolutely stupid things.