Rich country with absolutely no idea how to spend the money to help people.
TownInitial8567 on
If its not one of the cities, they don’t give a fuck.
dmn22 on
I could have told you that
Helpful_Doubt7969 on
The last government with the Green Party in power scuppered the LNG terminal and storage planned for Tarbert Co. Kerry. An act of national self sabotage of ever I saw it. All Putin has to do is drag an anchor up the Irish Sea and we have insufficient power, gas and data connections. The LNG terminal would have provided some level of redundancy for our power needs while we transition to a greener infrastructure. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face! And we wonder why we are lagging behind in infrastructure???
DiscountMiserable665 on
Excuse you Mr watchdog but we just built the world’s most expensive children’s hospital AND have planning permission for a Metro we won’t build.
sureyouknowurself on
Can’t be spending taxes on something that will benefit the taxpayer. That’s crazy talk.
AbradolfLincler77 on
No fucking shit! If only we had competent people in charge of our country instead of voting the same idiot landlords in over and over again 🤦♂️
vanKlompf on
No way!
FreakyIrish on
It’s gas, i live rurally, but there is an old train track close to the house, connected a lot of rural villages to larger towns. Would be a huge asset today, would eschew the need for cars and save me thousands.
Czechia is a great example of what to do right. Most of the little townlands and villages have rail as an option, if there is no train you are guaranteed to have buses. The bus stations are not fancy, but they provide shelter and are fit for purpose.
I dread to think how much a train stop would cost to build here, not to mind the other major infrastructure.
eggsbenedict17 on
Tax breaks for developers needed
Regular-Painting-677 on
No shit
EltonBongJovi on
Can we just have another viking invasion and let the Danes run out country? They actually have some sense in the Nordics.
tomashen on
Pikachu face
Vicxas on
Our leaders saving for a rainy day while the country falls apart.
North_Activity_5980 on
Era naw
qwerty_1965 on
We’re a rich country which acts poor.
debaser32 on
Just build the damn metro.
yetindeed on
Never had we payed so much and gotten so little in return. It’s all so predictable now. The waste and fraud are built in. It’s business as usual.
FFG gaslight and claim they have done great things. Easy money for landlords with no oversight and lax regulation. Money for developers to build houses they were already building, adding fuel on the inflation fire. Still missing targets by massive margins.
The passport and tax offices are in great shape, one to help our young college graduates flee and the other collecting more money for the fire.
FFG neglect, delay and mismanage and then cry when the facts are presented to them. Sometimes pretending like they’re the victims. Sometimes floating soft stories to journalists about “a call for change”, as if they weren’t in government. If only they had the power to change these things!
Bribing the country with its own money at elections, that they’ll claw back in extra taxes. Openly corrupt deal making with independents to form their government. Kite flying some sensible policy that they haven’t implemented in the last 10 years, that experts and the public support, but they have no intention of implementing it. It’s business as usual. More fuel for the fire.
How on earth do we keep electing this crowd.
JONFER--- on
I don’t think anyone could be surprised by this assertion!
Central government is particularly inept and wasteful when it comes to capital spending and efficiency from money.
Another part of the problem is the stupid laws and planning restrictions that cripple and derail infrastructure projects. Serial strategic planning objections usually but not exclusively by do-gooder environmentalists who are not even from the affected area can waste tens of millions in euro in legal and engineering costs and get projects totally cancelled when there have already been years and vast amounts of money put into them.
It’s absolute madness, and everyone goes along with it. The engineering firms are getting paid, the barristers are kept employed, the civil servants attached to the project have work and the politicians have crap to talk about! And when the project gets cancelled and has to be restarted they all get paid again at the taxpayers expense.
It’s absolute madness.
Massive-Foot-5962 on
We have been building out massive infrastructure. The National Broadband Plan is best in the world at giving everyone broadband. Electric grid is seeing billions – as well as even more billions coming in renewables. We have a number of massive road projects in the process – active travel routes popping up everywhere as well as rural bus links. Metro for Dublin is progressing. Loads of rail investment. We’ve never invested more in water infrastructure. We’ve never invested more in new schools and new hospital facilities. This is a genuine golden age of infrastructure build out.
The conclusion of the article is that we need to do more of this – not the conclusion of reddit that we’re not doing anything at the moment.
boiler_1985 on
Why is every statement outta there fucking mouths a “NO SHIT SHERLOCK!?!” Statement
Loud_Tank_5074 on
Government spending is up 50% on what it was pre COVID.
Rather than make any kind of difficult decision, they just threw money at it.
The golden age of corporate tax receipts has been somewhat squandered.
KevinAllNite on

Willing-Departure115 on
Even what gets approved takes far too long by the time you’re done with endless consultations, that only go and get upended in a judicial review anyway. Then the next recession hits, the money gets yanked, and it’s back to square one. What does get delivered tends to happen at the peak of the economic cycle, when it’s most expensive, and it tends to be poorly managed by the kinds of people bringing you the children’s hospital, OPW walls and arts council IT systems.
We are then capacity constrained, which in turn slows economic growth, degrades quality of life and provides citizens with a sense of very poor value for money from their taxes.
We’re really, really poor at it end to end. It would take a whole of government approach to overcome the malaise, but you just don’t see the ambition or the wherewithal to do it.
Rollorich on
So everyone complaining about it for the past 30 years were correct and it took “Watchdog” to bring about any awareness
jools4you on
But FFG would rather spend billions on a ‘give away’ budget just before the election, right from the Bertie playbook. I’m not saying they where buying votes I’m sure it just looks that way.
27 commenti
Rich country with absolutely no idea how to spend the money to help people.
If its not one of the cities, they don’t give a fuck.
I could have told you that
The last government with the Green Party in power scuppered the LNG terminal and storage planned for Tarbert Co. Kerry. An act of national self sabotage of ever I saw it. All Putin has to do is drag an anchor up the Irish Sea and we have insufficient power, gas and data connections. The LNG terminal would have provided some level of redundancy for our power needs while we transition to a greener infrastructure. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face! And we wonder why we are lagging behind in infrastructure???
Excuse you Mr watchdog but we just built the world’s most expensive children’s hospital AND have planning permission for a Metro we won’t build.
Can’t be spending taxes on something that will benefit the taxpayer. That’s crazy talk.
No fucking shit! If only we had competent people in charge of our country instead of voting the same idiot landlords in over and over again 🤦♂️
No way!
It’s gas, i live rurally, but there is an old train track close to the house, connected a lot of rural villages to larger towns. Would be a huge asset today, would eschew the need for cars and save me thousands.
Czechia is a great example of what to do right. Most of the little townlands and villages have rail as an option, if there is no train you are guaranteed to have buses. The bus stations are not fancy, but they provide shelter and are fit for purpose.
I dread to think how much a train stop would cost to build here, not to mind the other major infrastructure.
Tax breaks for developers needed
No shit
Can we just have another viking invasion and let the Danes run out country? They actually have some sense in the Nordics.
Pikachu face
Our leaders saving for a rainy day while the country falls apart.
Era naw
We’re a rich country which acts poor.
Just build the damn metro.
Never had we payed so much and gotten so little in return. It’s all so predictable now. The waste and fraud are built in. It’s business as usual.
FFG gaslight and claim they have done great things. Easy money for landlords with no oversight and lax regulation. Money for developers to build houses they were already building, adding fuel on the inflation fire. Still missing targets by massive margins.
The passport and tax offices are in great shape, one to help our young college graduates flee and the other collecting more money for the fire.
FFG neglect, delay and mismanage and then cry when the facts are presented to them. Sometimes pretending like they’re the victims. Sometimes floating soft stories to journalists about “a call for change”, as if they weren’t in government. If only they had the power to change these things!
Bribing the country with its own money at elections, that they’ll claw back in extra taxes. Openly corrupt deal making with independents to form their government. Kite flying some sensible policy that they haven’t implemented in the last 10 years, that experts and the public support, but they have no intention of implementing it. It’s business as usual. More fuel for the fire.
How on earth do we keep electing this crowd.
I don’t think anyone could be surprised by this assertion!
Central government is particularly inept and wasteful when it comes to capital spending and efficiency from money.
Another part of the problem is the stupid laws and planning restrictions that cripple and derail infrastructure projects. Serial strategic planning objections usually but not exclusively by do-gooder environmentalists who are not even from the affected area can waste tens of millions in euro in legal and engineering costs and get projects totally cancelled when there have already been years and vast amounts of money put into them.
It’s absolute madness, and everyone goes along with it. The engineering firms are getting paid, the barristers are kept employed, the civil servants attached to the project have work and the politicians have crap to talk about! And when the project gets cancelled and has to be restarted they all get paid again at the taxpayers expense.
It’s absolute madness.
We have been building out massive infrastructure. The National Broadband Plan is best in the world at giving everyone broadband. Electric grid is seeing billions – as well as even more billions coming in renewables. We have a number of massive road projects in the process – active travel routes popping up everywhere as well as rural bus links. Metro for Dublin is progressing. Loads of rail investment. We’ve never invested more in water infrastructure. We’ve never invested more in new schools and new hospital facilities. This is a genuine golden age of infrastructure build out.
The conclusion of the article is that we need to do more of this – not the conclusion of reddit that we’re not doing anything at the moment.
Why is every statement outta there fucking mouths a “NO SHIT SHERLOCK!?!” Statement
Government spending is up 50% on what it was pre COVID.
Rather than make any kind of difficult decision, they just threw money at it.
The golden age of corporate tax receipts has been somewhat squandered.

Even what gets approved takes far too long by the time you’re done with endless consultations, that only go and get upended in a judicial review anyway. Then the next recession hits, the money gets yanked, and it’s back to square one. What does get delivered tends to happen at the peak of the economic cycle, when it’s most expensive, and it tends to be poorly managed by the kinds of people bringing you the children’s hospital, OPW walls and arts council IT systems.
We are then capacity constrained, which in turn slows economic growth, degrades quality of life and provides citizens with a sense of very poor value for money from their taxes.
We’re really, really poor at it end to end. It would take a whole of government approach to overcome the malaise, but you just don’t see the ambition or the wherewithal to do it.
So everyone complaining about it for the past 30 years were correct and it took “Watchdog” to bring about any awareness
But FFG would rather spend billions on a ‘give away’ budget just before the election, right from the Bertie playbook. I’m not saying they where buying votes I’m sure it just looks that way.
Well no shit!!!!