Il feticismo della procedura irlandese: requisiti procedurali eccessivamente rigorosi stanno ostacolando la capacità dello Stato di fornire le infrastrutture e gli alloggi di cui abbiamo bisogno
https://howtotaxandspendit.substack.com/p/irelands-procedure-fetish?r=5cxyd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
di zainab1900
9 commenti
Regulations are there for a reason – to ensure (as far as possible) that projects approvals are based on merit, and that there is no negative impact on existing facilities or entitlements. The problems are not the regulations, but addressing the possible negative impacts perceived by individuals. Whether this is NIMBY or those with a wider interest such as habitat erosion, to ensure fairness there has to be a reasoned (aka a very long) consideration, addressing every nuance made in the objection. If anything is missed out it will be subject to a successful appeal. There does not seem to be a “for the greater good” consideration.
Is it regulation or just everything being slow regardless? I lived abroad and there’s this huge cultural difference in how long our timelines are. Any phase of review or report and the institution gives itself months to complete it. Any expert needed – add three months. It’s normal to announce a multi-month delay to a review and nobody bats an eyelid whereas heads would roll elsewhere, it would be a sign of critical incompetence. It’s the same in everyday life, we meekly accept that GP will (maybe) have our blood results in weeks, then you go to live somewhere where you have them in the afternoon, in your online patient portal, and your mind is thoroughly blown.
Its pretty hard to roll back any sort of regulation, especially stuff that can easily be abused by bad actors like the environmental regulations discussed here. It’s too far from the visible face of the problem(not enough infrastructure and houses) to be popular, vote winning or even understood by most and its very easy to claim the government are destroying the environment/infringing on peoples rights/bowing to neo capitalist overlords etc if they try to. And you can bet the house that PBP and SF would be on every TV and radio show shouting about it the minute it was announced.
So there’s not much positive incentive for politicians to pick up the banner of regulatory reform and a ton of risk and disincentive so it tends not to get prioritized even when it would massively improve the country.
A lot of the time, the problem isn’t procedure, it’s cack-handed attempts to bypass procedure.
One of the hold-ups in planning currently is apparently we have “too few planners” – despite how when you look at the mess that is our cities, with low-density derelict housing in the centre, and new apartment blocks going up outside the M50, you wonder just how useful all this “planning” is.
We copied and pasted the British regulatory and legal frameworks without having their legal and planning resources. Also they have the same paralysis we do.
But yeah, it’s extremely annoying that the government could announce Luas in 1998, and the first trams ran in 2004, but Busconnects has been in planning and development hell since 2014. Say what you will about Celtic Tiger government and development, at least we could build!
Regulation is an industry that employs a lot of people
One area where we are below others is construction. Many countries have far more building inspection and permits required. Even to do basic electrical work you need to take out a permit and any even basic electrical work needs to be done by an electrical.
We allow extension under a certain size.without planning. In parts of the US you need permits to do a little bit of landscaping.
I would be interested to see where we really sit. Perhaps we just don’t fund it well so its slow.
Was literally just discussing this yesterday with a civil engineer friend of mine.
She was saying it’s the biggest obstacle preventing any sort of infrastructure projects.
Over regulation results in approvals taking so long that new designs and planning are needed.