Strade, ferrovia, ospedali: perché i grandi progetti sono così lenti e costosi in Irlanda (podcast Irish Times)?
https://www.irishtimes.com/podcasts/inside-politics/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-big-things-done-in-ireland/
di theRockHead
Strade, ferrovia, ospedali: perché i grandi progetti sono così lenti e costosi in Irlanda (podcast Irish Times)?
https://www.irishtimes.com/podcasts/inside-politics/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-big-things-done-in-ireland/
di theRockHead
18 commenti
It’s a slightly depressing listen to be honest, but has some good examples of the bureaucracy involved in getting any project done in Ireland.
Does it cover backhanders?
Yeah very depressing listen, unfortunately no end in sight.
If there is an upside let it be that when infrastructure is developed it is rarely ever wasted.
>why are big projects so slow and costly in Ireland?
Well, the Irish Times doing everyting they can to torpedo them certainly doesn’t help
~~big projects~~ even _modest_ “projects”
Because every hole that is dug requires an engineer from the government, the contractor, the fund issuer, the company that is going to fill the hole with concrete etc etc, to inspect it , so much red tape… everyone gets a touch out of it.
it takes a while for family and friends to set up businesses so they can get some part of the contracts and a piece of the pie
People will give lots of excuses like we are on a island, have been poor until recently, etc
But conveniently ignoring a good few Eastern European countries with far less funding available getting shit done faster and cheaper…
Why not say the truth? The government is lazy. The developers are greedy. The people who object are entitled through the roof. There is corruption, there is incompetence.
Ireland has a lot of systems that are based on giving complaints enormous weighting. So you get everything shaped by giving high priority to objections rather than an agreed community planning type approach. Our planning laws are basically a complainers charter — everything is just mired in an endless mess of objections, appeals, court cases.. etc etc
You see the same thing in how we structure something like broadcasting regulation — enormous weight given to enabling every crackpot to write in complaints that have to be legally responded to in 10+ page documents.
By European standards it’s a hyper individualistic society in many respects. The British aren’t all that much different either. Look at HS2 — basically completely stymied by objections, compensation claims and extremely hard to challenge land ownership rights that resulted in enormous costs.
Living in North County Dublin and hearing discussion on a Metro North for more than 20 years, with zero actual development beyond initial planning discussion has been incredibly frustrating. Meanwhile the public transport options have not kept up with demand to the point that they are now woefully overcrowded snd and under resourced. I suspect whatever solution they come up with in the next decade will barely address the actual requirements. Im also aware this is a very Dublin centric problem with astronomical cost estimates so understandably, I wouldn’t expect much sympathy from the wider country
By coincidence WLR FM has a piece on the North Quay project in Waterford (BAM main contractor) this morning. Haven’t heard it yet but the main points are below
https://www.wlrfm.com/news/capital-ideas-for-the-capital-of-the-south-east-535014
The new public’s works contracts are junk. Written to suit contractors. Also the legal system. The Galway bypass got stopped by 1 man. If he didn’t, one of the green party councillors said she would stop it. Nobody should have that much power. Ban judicial reviews on national infrastructure.
I was looking at a photo of Dublin airport recently that was from the 1940’s and not 1 house around it anywhere. They all moved in beside it and now complain that it is affecting them. Stop pandering to assholes.
Haven’t listened yet (intend to) but this issue has gotten progressively worse and worse in the English-speaking world. Common law systems and the planning systems they’ve fostered surely must play a role.
Common law system we and the Brits use is a disaster for trying to create rules based planning. We need to change over to a civil law system like… the rest of Europe.
I think there is a very tricky balance. We know systems are delicate and seemingly small decisions can have big impacts later on and balancing the need for getting stuff done while also preventing corruption, hasty decisions etc is probably impossible. Power Broker by Robert Caro explains this in way too much detail.
The podcast made a very good point though that we are in a crisis. I would absolutely be in favour of suspending certain requirements or processes in order to make housebuilding quicker and cheaper but it will have negative impacts and people need to be willing to accept those tradeoffs for the bigger benefit, politicians and citizens alike.
Probably because our politicians are also slow and costly.
I knew the Ezra Klein (from New York Times )opinion pieces were going to come up when I saw the title. We have over regulated our building sectors, we passed the sweet point a long time ago. Our system is designed to stop from being built rather allow stuff to built. It was convenient for our politicians to have that in place.
On the EU regulations from environmental impact there was a habit in the UK (which we may have copied) of gold plating the EU requirements, as in adding a lot more stuff to the requirements to get it passed politician inspection by stealth. This was one of the things that really annoyed politician and stoked anti eu sentiment. Other EU countries do not have our strict planning system. I saw articles in the UK about simplifying their planning process especially for large projects as they are struggling with the costs and delays. So if the UK, USA and the rest of Europe have simplified process we will be fucked when it comes trying to get investment.
Honestly this should be one of the areas the government should have been looking at but it would be unpopular and open them up to attack from opposition. Regulation is seen as protecting people from greedy developers. But if it is too hard to build stuff then it won’t be built. I enjoyed it but sadly I don’t our system will change until it is far too late.
Corruption, incompetence, overwhelming bureaucracy, NIMBYism, and the usual “sure it’ll be grand” attitude we seem to take to just about everything.