What a damning indictment of our Government of the last 13 years.
Financial Times basically asking if we can manage our own affairs as failure to build needed infrastructure falls far behind the needs of our people and economy (sharing link enabled but may be paywalled after a certain number of downloads)
TheStoicNihilist on
Sure, whatever. It’s a bit early in the week for misery.
twistingmelonman on
Yes. Our government is incompetent, unimaginative, and beholden to a neo-liberal ideology that has been shown to be cruel and a failure.
SeanB2003 on
>”When you’re nouveau riche and you’re suddenly having to do these big construction [projects] in an otherwise services-based economy, it’s hard to do the low productivity things well because they haven’t been the focus,” said Kevin Timoney, chief economist at Davy, a brokerage.
The “nouveau riche” label is probably not a bad way to explain it. Ireland is very recently high income, but looks at those who’ve been wealthy for centuries and wonders why we don’t have the stuff they spent a century building.
marquess_rostrevor on
Well yes, but I imagine that is the case with most historically poor and then suddenly quite rich countries.
EchoVolt on
I think it’s more than that. We very definitely penny pinch on infrastructure and see it as something you’d build somewhere else.
A lot of things like big ticket public transport projects might as well be lunar missions.
We tend to just keep behaving like it’s the 1980s on policy.
Also a lot of projects get delivered quietly on time and to spec, but we tend to ignore them and focus on the absolute inanity of the children’s hospital project, which is the massive outlier.
SeaghanDhonndearg on
As a nation we’re effectively the Beverly Hillbillies.
yamalamama on
I don’t know how many times this has to be said, stop comparing the cost of building in Ireland against projects that use slave labour..
slamjam25 on
There’s no mystery at all about where the divide lies – Ireland has a fantastically successful private sector, weighed down by an utterly incompetent government. And as usual, the political prescription will be to give the incompetent government more and more power and resources taken from the part of the country that actually works.
Suspicious-Ad8576 on
The Irish population is getting what they deserve. That is all.
Nukem1890 on
A 10r would tip the scale because there’s not much sense in our government.
Alarmed_Station6185 on
This is great cos the only thing that registers with this gov is looking incompetent on the intl stage. They’re fine with it domestically
Intelligent-Aside214 on
It’s because we don’t do anything so we’re not good at doing them when we do finally get around to doing something.
But, when we finally get going and start building projects everyone screams that it’ll go over budget so it gets cancelled
smudgeonalense on
Is there any way of accurately measuring how much of our woes are caused by our elected representatives and how much are caused by our civil service. I feel our civil service flies under the radar of criticism a lot of the time.
Ornery-Ad4802 on
Yes.
Kharanet on
The writer is going easy on Ireland too.
FlatPackAttack on
Absolutely
As long as we have 1 euro
That’s more money than the government has sense
Swagspray on
We have at least 1 money and it seems we have 0 sense, so yes
countpissedoff on
Financial Times not very subtly suggesting we are gombeen men and that we don’t know what we are doing – well at least we are still in Europe, peasants.
Sentar_trenzz on
I’ve been harping on about this to any of my friends and family about this for ages.. it’s insane that we don’t have more projects and bold innovative ideas that are cost effective and modern for the country,. we’re stuck in the now decades auld complacency state of mind that is “ah shure it’ll be or it’s grand” no vision for the country crying out for simple things like proper roads or even simpler fully covered bus shelters or even bus shelters at all… in a country where it rains regularly without fail.. no spaces dedicated to any indoor activities for families and people to shelter from the rain.. lack of housing, hospital beds, proper road traffic policing, it’s just awful, homelessness awash, refugees in units that cost double then what they initially cost… the list is endless.. all this money and no brains, vision, discussion… it’s mind blowing. We next door to countries that have the talent and the brains to help that regularly develop and construct massive and medium scale projects and get sh$t done.. we aren’t we tapping into those ressources, growing and innovating our systems.. This country needs a massive Marshall style plan like in the US in early 20th century, yes it will take time and yes it will be painful at times but let’s get these things done.. It pure stagnation and lack of vision and balls to get anything done.. ok rant or despair, cry for change over.. it’s just painful to experience on a yearly basis. C’mon Ireland get to grips and get sh$t done!
Professional_Elk_489 on
I think they have money but no experience and everyone are sharks and charlatans ready to rip the govt off
21 Comments
What a damning indictment of our Government of the last 13 years.
Financial Times basically asking if we can manage our own affairs as failure to build needed infrastructure falls far behind the needs of our people and economy (sharing link enabled but may be paywalled after a certain number of downloads)
Sure, whatever. It’s a bit early in the week for misery.
Yes. Our government is incompetent, unimaginative, and beholden to a neo-liberal ideology that has been shown to be cruel and a failure.
>”When you’re nouveau riche and you’re suddenly having to do these big construction [projects] in an otherwise services-based economy, it’s hard to do the low productivity things well because they haven’t been the focus,” said Kevin Timoney, chief economist at Davy, a brokerage.
The “nouveau riche” label is probably not a bad way to explain it. Ireland is very recently high income, but looks at those who’ve been wealthy for centuries and wonders why we don’t have the stuff they spent a century building.
Well yes, but I imagine that is the case with most historically poor and then suddenly quite rich countries.
I think it’s more than that. We very definitely penny pinch on infrastructure and see it as something you’d build somewhere else.
A lot of things like big ticket public transport projects might as well be lunar missions.
We tend to just keep behaving like it’s the 1980s on policy.
Also a lot of projects get delivered quietly on time and to spec, but we tend to ignore them and focus on the absolute inanity of the children’s hospital project, which is the massive outlier.
As a nation we’re effectively the Beverly Hillbillies.
I don’t know how many times this has to be said, stop comparing the cost of building in Ireland against projects that use slave labour..
There’s no mystery at all about where the divide lies – Ireland has a fantastically successful private sector, weighed down by an utterly incompetent government. And as usual, the political prescription will be to give the incompetent government more and more power and resources taken from the part of the country that actually works.
The Irish population is getting what they deserve. That is all.
A 10r would tip the scale because there’s not much sense in our government.
This is great cos the only thing that registers with this gov is looking incompetent on the intl stage. They’re fine with it domestically
It’s because we don’t do anything so we’re not good at doing them when we do finally get around to doing something.
But, when we finally get going and start building projects everyone screams that it’ll go over budget so it gets cancelled
Is there any way of accurately measuring how much of our woes are caused by our elected representatives and how much are caused by our civil service. I feel our civil service flies under the radar of criticism a lot of the time.
Yes.
The writer is going easy on Ireland too.
Absolutely
As long as we have 1 euro
That’s more money than the government has sense
We have at least 1 money and it seems we have 0 sense, so yes
Financial Times not very subtly suggesting we are gombeen men and that we don’t know what we are doing – well at least we are still in Europe, peasants.
I’ve been harping on about this to any of my friends and family about this for ages.. it’s insane that we don’t have more projects and bold innovative ideas that are cost effective and modern for the country,. we’re stuck in the now decades auld complacency state of mind that is “ah shure it’ll be or it’s grand” no vision for the country crying out for simple things like proper roads or even simpler fully covered bus shelters or even bus shelters at all… in a country where it rains regularly without fail.. no spaces dedicated to any indoor activities for families and people to shelter from the rain.. lack of housing, hospital beds, proper road traffic policing, it’s just awful, homelessness awash, refugees in units that cost double then what they initially cost… the list is endless.. all this money and no brains, vision, discussion… it’s mind blowing. We next door to countries that have the talent and the brains to help that regularly develop and construct massive and medium scale projects and get sh$t done.. we aren’t we tapping into those ressources, growing and innovating our systems.. This country needs a massive Marshall style plan like in the US in early 20th century, yes it will take time and yes it will be painful at times but let’s get these things done.. It pure stagnation and lack of vision and balls to get anything done.. ok rant or despair, cry for change over.. it’s just painful to experience on a yearly basis. C’mon Ireland get to grips and get sh$t done!
I think they have money but no experience and everyone are sharks and charlatans ready to rip the govt off