Ireland’s National Infrastructure

[Hallbopping]

I know we’ve a housing thread and a couple of others for transport etc but I thought a thread to discuss national infrastructure would be interesting.

I read an interesting article by the founder of Stripe in the Irish Times where he cites a lack of ownership and powers among Ireland’s politicians to deliver badly needed infrastructure. Our population has grown hugely and our infrastructure just cannot keep up.

Our National Development Plans often do not happen in their entirety. We need to do something different to accelerate the pace of infrastructure construction in this country.

Very interesting read.

John Collison of Stripe: Ireland is going backwards. Here’s how to get it moving

The Stripe co-founder looks at how the State can get out of the government-by-agency corner into which it has painted itself

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Handy Run]

Tbf to the Brits, if they put something in their manifesto get elected with a majority on that manifesto, there's no stopping that thing politically.

So if one of the big parties ran on overhauling planning to ignore nimbys and got a majority they should be able to ram through those reforms so long as they aren't against the constitution or EU laws.

 

[Hallbopping]

Tbf to the Brits, if they put something in their manifesto get elected with a majority on that manifesto, there's no stopping that thing politically.

So if one of the big parties ran on overhauling planning to ignore nimbys and got a majority they should be able to ram through those reforms so long as they aren't against the constitution or EU laws.

Out manifestos are a joke. They are things we’d like to do but we can’t guarantee anything. People talk about trust in politics and politicians, if we actually delivered on projects we promised that’d go a long way to stalling the rise of the far right.

 

[El Guapo]

Tbf to the Brits, if they put something in their manifesto get elected with a majority on that manifesto, there's no stopping that thing politically.

So if one of the big parties ran on overhauling planning to ignore nimbys and got a majority they should be able to ram through those reforms so long as they aren't against the constitution or EU laws.

Property rights are way too strong on this country. All the planning objections to wind farms, bus corridors, Greenways, solar farms and housing.

All the vox pops on Rte with concerned farmers bitching about their farms being spit for roads or concerned about "security" or "Health and Safety".

Compensate people if necessary but build the thing.

 

[Hallbopping]

Property rights are way too strong on this country. All the planning objections to wind farms, bus corridors, Greenways, solar farms and housing.

All the vox pops on Rte with concerned farmers bitching about their farms being spit for roads or concerned about "security" or "Health and Safety".

Compensate people if necessary but build the thing.

I totally agree. If a road, railway line or whatever goes through a sports field or whatever then feckin pay up and see to it that they can relocate to a greenfield site near their locality.

We’ve pandered to the individual good for far too long and we are now paying a price for it.

 

[Bwana_Dik]

I totally agree. If a road, railway line or whatever goes through a sports field or whatever then feckin pay up and see to it that they can relocate to a greenfield site near their locality.

We’ve pandered to the individual good for far too long and we are now paying a price for it.

We've got the balance between individual and societal good completely skewed.

 

[Happyhonkaman]

To be fair to Collison I didn't realise he was involved in a group trying to push this on here. I started reading the article thinking we were getting a lecture from a guy simply because he had the profile to give us one, and then realised that he has a lot to say and there is a fair but to digest there also. His point about governance is absolutely spot on but you cannot have it both ways, and what he is proposing goes against how modern society has developed where everyone has a voice, no one can be offended, and all decisions should be for everyone on the face of them at least. His points about Haughey are spot on, he absolutely was visionary in certain respects but with that power to deliver quickly and without distraction came the corruption that accompanied it.

I work with government agencies every day of the week, the ability for them to make a decision is all but gone. For all of the hand wringing that accompanied the Leinster House bike shed, the knock on effect has been catastrophic and is detrimental in the bigger sense. Amplify that significantly for any national scale project, and add the public procurement element into everything and you get a sense of why nothing can get done anymore. What it has become is a quagmire of bureaucracy that simply leads to the lowest tender being the winner in the vast majority of situations, quality and value have been sidelined.

I had a discussion with a judge recently regarding the judicial review process, he could not see my point at all since all he saw was the legal aspect and everything must be correct down to documents being torn apart for minor inaccuracies when they were never designed or written to be. You now have barristers reviewing planning permission before they are put into the system, and with that comes extra time, money and ultimately higher purchase prices.. but thats what it now takes because of the public stake. We own that, its what people are insisting on

One thing is for certain.. regardless of whether Collison is correct or not, the public service is not able to make the decisions they need to, and it is stocked high with semi-competent pen pushers who have no idea what a days work looks like any more, but theres any amount of box ticking to be checked to make sure the people on the other side are the cheapest

 

[knockfiarna]

Inertia in state agencies allied with nimbyism is at the heart of a lot the lack of progress on infrastructure and construction in Ireland.
Ever party and TD goes on about the lack of housing and facilities but many of them are the people objecting in the first place.

 

[Happyhonkaman]

Inertia in state agencies allied with nimbyism is at the heart of a lot the lack of progress on infrastructure and construction in Ireland.
Ever party and TD goes on about the lack of housing and facilities but many of them are the people objecting in the first place.

Its like a sick joke. We either want housing or we dont, if we want it it means we have to build it somewhere which inevitably means increased densities etc. The toughest planning permissions to get through are those in established areas because there are vested interests everywhere you look. The thing is that these are also the best placed areas for housing since they have established infrastructure - schools, parks, shops, services, public transport, pitches etc etc.

We are desperate for deciding that we want things, but only as long as they dont affect us directly, and unfortunately politicians will pander to this stuff as it equals votes. There is a large enough apartment block built near my house recently, the local opposition to it was stiff and I was pretty much on my own in not having an issue with it - as far as Im concerned, if you live near the city in an established area then you must accept that it will be more densely occupied as time moves on since the city has to accommodate more families.

The politicians round here had no problem telling people they were against it, I can't actually recall any stating that they were supportive of it

 

[Hallbopping]

I’m adding a poll to this thread to test appetite for more power to drive through key infrastructure projects.