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Article: Government to outline €39.4bn capital plan
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Eh...so? Why is Galway "more important" than East Wicklow? Not to me it ain't!
Bray is a suburb, not a commuter town, ditto Greystones/Delgany; not even a new one. I said "de facto" as distinct from "de fiction".
I was originally going to reproach those posters using the sneering "Wesht" approach (I was especially offended by some dolt who managed to get "the famine is over" into the thread) - but reading this kind of anti-Dublin nonsense almost makes me wanna join them. :cool:
I'm not anti-Dublin in the slightest but I can't agree that East Wicklow is more nationally important than Galway City.
Suburbs/commuter towns <-- people leave Bray and Greystones in their droves everyday to head into Dublin for work, college, shopping...etc.
In contrast, 30,000 people from surrounding areas are drawn into Galway every single day for work, college (20,000 students), school, shopping, hospitals/doctors/dentists (people come from all over the West of Ireland for medical treatment in Galway).
Not to mention tourism - Galway Races gets 200,000 visitors in one week, not sure how much the arts festival gets, the Volvo Ocean Race had 680,000 visitors in one week last year; these are just examples, there are plenty of tourists throughout the year even when there are no festivals. I doubt East Wicklow generates nearly as many tourists.
Galway is just like Dublin but on a smaller scale (i.e. - people are drawn in everyday for various reasons)
Bray & Greystones are just like Oranmore/Athenry/Tuam/Loughrea but on a bigger scale (i.e. - people are drawn out of these suburbs/commuter towns everyday for various reasons).I support that - blame yer Greens for the fact it isn't already built - not the Dubs. As for Claregalway and other tiny commuter villages - bring out the violins!
Isn't it a self-appointed environmentalist from Dublin who is dragging the Galway Bypass through the courts with his legal challenges? :P
I blame him specifically though, I don't hold it against the general Dublin population.0 -
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Isn't it a self-appointed environmentalist from Dublin who is dragging the Galway Bypass through the courts with his legal challenges? :P
I blame him specifically though, I don't hold it against the general Dublin population.
Glad you don't 'cos it was a Galway man (or man with Galway address) who was at the heart of the Glen of the Downs; Kildare bypass and several other third party objections to roads around Dublin 10 years ago.
But I don't blame the people of the West for that either
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Dublin, and then Cork must be the prime focus of our investments, but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge the contribution and potential of other cities and large towns. I absolutely agree with your point about spreading resouces too thin. But when I said "individual towns and villages should receive investment appropriate to their size and function" I meant exactly that. Instead of opening two swimming pools for example in small towns in a region, why not open a larger, better-quality swimming pool in a larger town in a region. That is the kind of simple, logical thinking I am talking about. That is the sort of focussing of resources we need.
Please don't misunderstand me, we do not need 10 + national major urban centres. But that doesn't mean that at the lower-end of the investment scale resources shouldn't be focussed. It is only right that say, Athlone should be the focus of mid-scale investment in that particular core area, and then Galway the focus of larger-scale investments in the overall region. We can't just say "invest in the cities", we have to look at the overall picture and the different kind of investments involved.
This is true in general. However regional competencies should be injected into the mix as well.
If investment were concentrated on Dublin and Cork one would see a focus on particular skillsets in those towns. This would lead to an obsession with Financial services .... ie Dublin and Pharmaceuticals ....ie Cork. That is because they have been particularly successful industries in those towns/areas.
However one could then lose sight of the fact that the most successful pharma operation in Ireland is in Westport Co Mayo and that the most successful indigenous industrial 'schmart' sector is in Galway (Biomedical).
All of this is headwreckingly complicated for politicians who are distributed nationally, many in areas with nothing of any merit, and also for the dept of Finance which is generally Dublin obsessed and which gets very pissed off at outbreaks of success in the regions...and most particularly accidental ones or unplanned ones
Biomedical foreign investment was only located in Galway, initially, because the electricity supply was way to crap for pharma. Then the locals went and made a success of it
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It is very easy to blame the politicians. In Ireland, thanks to democracy, they are a very representative of the views and priorities and ethos of the people who elect them - us.
And just reading this thread and it's passionate rationalization of parochial interests it is pretty clear that any politician who doesn't reflect that is a dead politician walking.
There is probably no "solution" to this "problem" - some wise American has observed that all politics is local.
On a purely functional basis the NSS is a heap of merd. We can all see that - even the politicians who invented it. But just try taking my county/town/village out of the loop and see what happens!
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invinciblePRSTV wrote: »We have what you propose already in place BG and thats the National Spatial Strategy, the primary failing of the NSS and your suggestion is that having multiple centres to concentrate infrastructure in a tiny country like Ireland means spreading scarce resources far too thinly to make any real impact.
As long as we delude ourselves into thinking that all the minor cities & towns deserve an equal share of the pie the more likely it is they will all continue to stagnate and the GDA agglomeration will continue to grow.
+1
What the government should have done was set up a small number of regional hubs which could have been targeted for development in the form of motorway connections to dublin as well as the other regional hubs, good road connections to sorrounding towns within 50 miles, high quality broadband infrastructure, relocation of some government departments, along with added incentives for development in these areas. The best option would probably have been to target Cork, Limerick and Galway.
What the government came up with was pointless, the end result of which may be that no alternative regional center will develop, leading to large areas of the country dying off as rural depopulation continues.
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There has been some interesting & quite polarised views on this thread in relation to government spending on infrastructure. I welcome this.
I think your post is just as polarised even if you try to hide itMaybe the question should be: Is it in the best interest of Ireland to promote a sprawling metropolis on the eastern seaboard which continues to (correctly) require significant investment in infrastructure, which, given the finite infrastructure budget, is at the expense of infrastructure in other areas? As a nation, since the foundation of the state, rightly or wrongly, we have prioritised our capital city.
It would be more accurate to say that people think that Dublin has been prioritised but that's simply not true. For the last few decades, we've had an abundance of policies all aimed at de-prioritising Dublin. The IDA has offered huge grants to foreign companies to set up outside Dublin, we've built airports everywhere people wanted them, we've tried to decentralise government departments (badly), we've offered grants for businesses setting up in Gaeltach areas, we've forced planes to land in Shannon long after it wasn't technically required, we stunted Dublin airports runway so larger freight planes can only land in Shannon and a whole host of other things. Not to mention that on a per capita basis, Dublin receives less general taxation than the rest of the country.
People don't see any of that - they see a few hundred million spent on a Luas line and say that Dublin gets all the money. They see new businesses opening up in Dublin and complain that the "Dublin" government puts all the jobs there, ignoring that those companies, and not the government, chose Dublin. They complain about poor broadband but live ten miles from the nearest exchange. Likewise, they complain about bad roads but want to live in the countryside away from main roads thereby requiring more road construction and maintenance and a larger utility network. They complain about closing small hospitals but don't want to leave in a town or city where the hospitals are. The list is endless.
BluntGuy hit the nail on the headmy feeling is that "regional development" to many people (not suggesting anyone in this forum of course), is that my town/village/hamlet/hovel etc. is the centre of investment. People want mega-investment on their doorstep.0 -
A few points here...
- even though I live in Kerry, I welcome the announcement of the infrastructure to be built in Dublin. Nowhere have I claimed that dublin "gets all the money"
- i have no expectation that we in Kerry shall EVER have infrastructure as per Dublin ... clearly it's not needed/required and would be a complete waste of money
- polarised? i think not. my question was not in fact about the infrastructure spend but about whether we as a NATION want to pursue an obvious imbalance where the capital city is 4 times large than the 2nd city
- in a previous post i have made mention of my local hospital - KGH - and it's downgrading. i live about 15km from same. do you think it right that i should have to travel 110km to CUH for treatment, a journey that can take up to 3 hours due to the poor state of the N22? or, as you suggested below that i should re-locate purely to be closer?
again, please don't let this thread descend into a "dublin v's the rest of the country" debate, because i don't think that this will benefit any of us. we are, after all, "all in this together".I think your post is just as polarised even if you try to hide it
It would be more accurate to say that people think that Dublin has been prioritised but that's simply not true. For the last few decades, we've had an abundance of policies all aimed at de-prioritising Dublin. The IDA has offered huge grants to foreign companies to set up outside Dublin, we've built airports everywhere people wanted them, we've tried to decentralise government departments (badly), we've offered grants for businesses setting up in Gaeltach areas, we've forced planes to land in Shannon long after it wasn't technically required, we stunted Dublin airports runway so larger freight planes can only land in Shannon and a whole host of other things. Not to mention that on a per capita basis, Dublin receives less general taxation than the rest of the country.
People don't see any of that - they see a few hundred million spent on a Luas line and say that Dublin gets all the money. They see new businesses opening up in Dublin and complain that the "Dublin" government puts all the jobs there, ignoring that those companies, and not the government, chose Dublin. They complain about poor broadband but live ten miles from the nearest exchange. Likewise, they complain about bad roads but want to live in the countryside away from main roads thereby requiring more road construction and maintenance and a larger utility network. They complain about closing small hospitals but don't want to leave in a town or city where the hospitals are. The list is endless.
BluntGuy hit the nail on the head0 -
A few points here...
- even though I live in Kerry, I welcome the announcement of the infrastructure to be built in Dublin. Nowhere have I claimed that dublin "gets all the money"
- i have no expectation that we in Kerry shall EVER have infrastructure as per Dublin ... clearly it's not needed/required and would be a complete waste of money
- polarised? i think not. my question was not in fact about the infrastructure spend but about whether we as a NATION want to pursue an obvious imbalance where the capital city is 4 times large than the 2nd city
- in a previous post i have made mention of my local hospital - KGH - and it's downgrading. i live about 15km from same. do you think it right that i should have to travel 110km to CUH for treatment, a journey that can take up to 3 hours due to the poor state of the N22? or, as you suggested below that i should re-locate purely to be closer?
again, please don't let this thread descend into a "dublin v's the rest of the country" debate, because i don't think that this will benefit any of us. we are, after all, "all in this together".
I know it may be a personal question, but why did you chose to live in Kerry?0 -
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