Are the Irish fit to be let at the controls?

So do I, and yes there's that - it's an old wisdom that every bureaucracy will only ever grow itself never make itself smaller - but thats not quite the same thing. There's also cronyism, arse covering and outright shenanigans and corruption. Anyone who thinks this doesnt happen in our supposedly advanced societies is kidding themselves.

Taking a longer historical view.

It is part of a trend of trying to perfect society, a belief that more regulation, more scrutiny, more compliance, more administration, and more openness, more stakeholders will make things better but instead everything ends up in a quagmire.

Any major or even minor infrastructure project will receive dozens of submissions and they all have to be considered and dealt with. That is not just an Irish thing though.

The Irish state seems to have a huge history of farming out what should be state-provided services to NGOs and charities and that is part of the issue.

TFI Local Link DSL is an independent company, not for profit. https://locallinkdsl.ie/about-us/

Why is transport in rural areas run by an NGO for example?

The NTA was set up to rein in CIE. They don't want to be running the services directly, rather they want to pay private companies to do it. Examples being the Luas and Go-Ahead (although the latter has shown that the private model doesn't necessarily work well either). I presume the rural services are NGOs because they'd never be profitable if run as a commercial venture.

There's no doubt that the way things are done have to change and that includes how we govern.

The country is growing rapidly and needs massive investment in roads, housing, health, transport etc to cater for that.

Things need to happen rapidly but things move far too slow. Case in point being metro. After 20 years it's now got to public hearing for one line, just one line not 3 or 4 and instead of just being bulilt ignorant TDs and senators who should not be allowed get involved are at this late stage voicing objections to routing and terminus and it's pure NIMBYISM and not working in national interest. Media give voices to krank economists like Colm McCarthy too and this then could lead to more delays and falling behind. Very frustrating.

Whole system needs to change along with mindset. That's what I find frustrating about Ireland but again it does not make the country a disaster.

It isn't wholy an Irish thing, but this would be one of the worst countries for it.

A few years ago South Australia had a storm which triggerd a lot of wind farms to shut down and damaged some power lines. Cascading failures shut down most of the grid for many hours.

They identified the weakness and then built and commissioned the worlds largest grid battery in under a year. Under a year, under a year, under a year....

This country would still be debating forming a committe to take submissions and evaluate proposals and make recommendations in several years time, a decade after the power outage, then there would be another 15 years to get anything that eventuated through the planning process.

The need for a national childrens hospital was identified in around 1997, I believe - F me dead.

Lets try this one. Limerick has needed a far larger, modern, new build hospital for over 20 years to replace that hopeless rabbit warren that is Limerick regional. Two teenage girls died in the hospital very recently because it's just hopelessly inadequate.

But you know what, there isn't even a national debate or recognition that a new large and expensive replacement is required as a matter of urgency, when it's beyond effing obvious! It was bloody obvious 20 years ago when I remember standing in my kitchen hearing about the panic over the number of people on trolleys at Limerick RH.

20 years on and two girls have just died because this problem hasn't been addressed. You can only fix this problem one way but that fix isn't even a consideration, 20 years on, and we just had a €10 billion revenue surplus and there are media articles about the problem of what to do with such a surplus - AAAAAAArrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhh!!!!!!!!

But we have the most expensive hospital on the world !

Why have 5 hospitals when you can have a lovely unopened oval one in the middle of a traffic jam.

It's like Leo and co trying to solve Israel/Gaza, Ukraine/Russia, Climate Change, housing the World !!!, , instead of ***** building houses, hospitals, rail lines ...training plumbers and carpenters.

This is just a very generic “Ireland is shít and we are incompetent” thread. Site is filled with them. All very much the same.

The over-regulation, compliance, and everyone can have their say culture is a response to the failures of the past, industrial schools, the Madaglin laundries, and the planning tribunals are a few examples. c

I am part of the squeezed muddle. 😁

Yeah, the second highest paid public sector in the EU.

You wouldn't find any takers for them, though.

Cromwell lived here for a period too, what's your point?

The idea that some long dead imperialist's opinion on Ireland is valid is hilarious.

Surely the equivalent of a transit verbund here is the NTA?

The NTA is not an NGO, it is a State Agency.

The main operators here are semi-states, like CIE, etc.

Ah yeah, just hand the place over to one of the Big 4 and let them run it.

Daft thread.

100% agree

Some of us seem to have a strange need for self hate in this country, I wonder is this unique to us ? Maybe some have really bought into the “thick Paddy” stereotype perpetuated by the British.

Is it really a Socialism? Not seeing that from the perspective of a middle class working person.

It’s like some bastardized mongolian clusterf**k of gombeenism, capitalism and socialism where nothing seema to work. Personally I think Irish people want a form of socialism, but don’t want to pay for it. A solution might be to give Country Councils more power and funding/tax so there is less reliance on the national government, I could be very wrong but I think if people saw more how money was spent locally from local taxes then things might be taken more seriously.

How many tax payers are there in Ireland?

Does Ireland have the most progressive tax system in the EU, or the least? Easy multiple choice to make up for the first question.

Answer me those and I can get stuck in with an expletive riddled rant about CoTW and it's head and why all of these things are relevant to your question and an answer to it.

Not enough people with expertise actually in charge of the areas they are supposed to be ministers in. How many schoolteachers in government?

Usually the problem isn't their profession, it's their surname. When the sh!t hit the fan in 20028 the top three people in power were all elected on the basis of who their father was.

It'll swing to blaming immigrants at some point. Always does. Early days.

We need people in politics who are decent and honest and unwilling to become part of the rotten boys club that is the dail.

Or rte for that matter. Or any organisation in this country tbh.

But while I think some people do go into jobs in these places with a good heart and a want to affect change, they get sucked into a system that is poisonous and self-serving.

It's no different in any other country. African countries are riddled with ineptitude and corruption. European countries are being controlled by the EU and imo have no say in the running of their own country

european countries are not being "controled" by the EU.

they are simply expected to abide by the rules they agreed to abide by when they joined, and abide by the rules that they voted for or a majority voted for.

the very same as any other club that an individual or country may join.

if european countries were being controlled by the EU, they would not be able to implement anything of their own accord and yet they do.