What is really wrong with the N.W. ?...

Paddy20

Why is the North West always lagging way behind the rest of Ireland ?...

Is it because we are too peripheral, or of no consequence in the scheme of things ?...

What do we really need to improve our quality of life, re; jobs, infrastructure etc.

Has corruption in business and public (Political) quarters, destroyed our self esteem.

Have you any views about 'what the problems are ! ' and how we could Make it better for the next generation.

I recently read somewhere that 'The Finn Valley' has the highest Suicide rate amongst the young, than anywhere else in Europe ?..:eek:

Do we the local residents, not have a responsibility to highlight the problems and how they might be rectified .

P.:cool:

R0ot

I just think the irish government don't care about us anymore, im wondering do we have the lowest population count of all the counties... All our TD's that get elected bog off down to dublin and we never see them again until the next election of some description :mad:

Dagon

I think it's all down to ...

location, location, location.

Simple as that.

There just as much ****, corruption, etc. in Dublin and other thriving counties (probably more there, because of the large amount of finance) as there is in NW. And proximity to hot spots like Galway and Dublin plays a huge part in the economy.

Paddy20

Dagon wrote:

I think it's all down to ...

location, location, location.

Simple as that.

There just as much ****, corruption, etc. in Dublin and other thriving counties (probably more there, because of the large amount of finance) as there is in NW. And proximity to hot spots like Galway and Dublin plays a huge part in the economy.

Why not ask the IDA, to justify the millions of Euros donated from EU coffers, and what, if anything they have achieved that will prove of benefit to citizens of the N.W. in the long term , apart from well paid comfortable offices for their own employees ?...

P.:cool:

Glazun

Mhm,.. 70% of crime in letterkenny goes undetected apparently.. and we have the highest count of sexual abuse aswell. .. highest rate of unemployment aswell.

As far as the low population thing goes, that was more then likely caculated in
how much land is in the county..

The whole Internet to the N.W. is a joke aswell, these wireless companies seem to be pretty.. shoddy in most cases.. ¬_¬

We should just annex ourselves from the rest of Ireland by building a big wall on the border to letrim.. ¬_¬ Or, form a party, in which all members give up all their money and land to the party, the money is then spread around the party.. and this goes on until the party has the whole county.. ¬_¬ Is there a law against that? o_o

muffler

Power to the people.

The North West is only as good or as bad as its residents.

Transport21 Fan

Dagon wrote:

I think it's all down to ...

location, location, location.

Simple as that.

There just as much ****, corruption, etc. in Dublin and other thriving counties (probably more there, because of the large amount of finance) as there is in NW. And proximity to hot spots like Galway and Dublin plays a huge part in the economy.

That's it in a nutshell. Sligo and Letterkenny need to be built up into proper cities. Right now the North West has a small population spread out over a vast area. All of Ireland's cities are way too small (including Dublin) and they all need to greatly expand in population.

But Sligo and Letterkenny are so far behind they really need to get their acts together and boost the populations of these urban areas ASAP. Building cities rather than a gazillion houses in the countryside is the answer. Be good for the tourism in the North West as well.

Build up Sligo and Letterkenny - you get Economies of Scale and then the broadband, commuter railways, high frequency bus service, major hospitals and multi nationals will come.

Allowing gas to come ashore in Mayo would be a good idea too... Major industry need vast amount of energy. Why do you think Cork has all the Pharmaceutical plants. They saw the advantage of it, rather than developing a victim complex and then wonder why the major corporations ignored them.

LKLad

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Th
Allowing gas to come ashore in Mayo would be a good idea too... Major industry need vast amount of energy. Why do you think Cork has all the Pharmaceutical plants. They saw the advantage of it, rather than developing a victim complex and then wonder why the major corporations ignored them.

They also have the Minister for Enterprise and Employment.....our economy is far too focused on retail and construction, both of which are cyclical and we have some tough times ahead when interest rates get back to around 5%.

Transport21 Fan

LKLad wrote:

They also have the Minister for Enterprise and Employment.....our economy is far too focused on retail and construction, both of which are cyclical and we have some tough times ahead when interest rates get back to around 5%.

One of the problems with Donegal in particular is that it is the last place in Ireland to still have the old idea that you have to have a major employer in every village and town and everybody in the town works in that one factory.

This is economic russian roulette and a leftover from the 1950s. It is far better for people to commute to a nearby urban centre were there are a vast range of jobs in all sectors. So if one industry closes down it does not mean the death of any community.

The problem with the "the Government better bring us a factory to our village" mentality is that if the factory goes down it is a economic and social disaster for the town. Donegal seems to be the last place in Ireland to figure this out yet. Nearly all the blame for this can be placed on the media in the Northwest which seems to have no other excuses for anything other than pointing the finger at Dublin and screaming "guilty".

Nobody in Dublin forces farmers in Donegal to pollute drinking water with **** and piss, dumps rubbish at the side of the roads, leaves cars to rot in fields, drives pissed out of their heads at 100mph on country roads at 2AM, destroys the once beautiful natural Donegal countryside with thousands of one-off houses to make greedy farmers rich, nor made your fishing fleet little more than a floating mafia. Do you think multinationals when they consider opening a base in Ireland are ignorant of this stuff? Think again, they go out of their way to look for this stuff.

The North West needs to follow the rest of the country and think in terms of nearby large economic urban centers and commuting to jobs there. This requires massive investment in transport infrastruture and in the North West proper bus services which are frequent, run late into the night and serve rural villages and towns with nearby urban centres. Such as Cornwall.

Oh and instaed of worshipping the Rossport 5 and parading them around as saints, see them as a danger to economic development in the whole West of Ireland.

The North West all in all is a very nice place to live. The problems which are there, can be solved easily by a developing a sense of social maturity and less dependence of having a catholic preist coming along every decade to save the place.

The North West has a fantastic future in many ways. The problem is that the media in the North West is way too pessmistic, negative, has an incredible victim complex (which is long past its sell-by date) and is always looking for the worst case scenario before it happens. The polticans seem to think they are paid to keep the IFA happy first and foremost and forget that most of the people in the North West do not work in farming.

Leinster, Munster and Shannonside have made their own luck in recent years, the Midlands is starting to turn around - instead of blaming outsiders the North West should ask themselves what these regions did right and copy it.

LKLad

You speak of the North West as if it were an independent entity.
The North West has lost thousands of jobs - that's not a victim complex its a fact.

We get a couple of hundred call centre jobs while Michael Martin is able to attracy pharma, biotech and financial services clusters to his own back yard.

It is the government's repsonsibility to provide the infrastructure and to target high value industries for the region as they are the only ones with the state assets to do so - Large high Value multinationals didn't go to Cork because they like the scenery, the went there because a brilliant package was put together by the state agencies and the personal intervention of the minister was no doubt instrumental.

These are the realities. I would argue people in the North west are as entrepreneurial as I have seen anywhere, but this spirit cannot replace the benefits of a coherent integrated state strategy for the region. This is what will deliver long term propserity.

Transport21 Fan

You speak of the North West as if it were an independent entity.
The North West has lost thousands of jobs - that's not a victim complex its a fact.

In mainly fly-by-night, sweatshop, low skilled jobs that the North West is better off without. There have been more jobs gained in the NW in recent times than lost and the CSO website supports this. It's just that the NW media and local culture thinks unless it it 1,000 working in the same facotry then there are no jobs being created at all.

We get a couple of hundred call centre jobs while Michael Martin is able to attracy pharma, biotech and financial services clusters to his own back yard.

Marian Harkin, Dana, Pat the Cope Gallagher...etc. Hardly dynamic progessive politicans with a long term vision of the North West in the wider scheme of Ireland and Europe. The only politican the NW who seemed to tell it like it is and understood the national picture and not just catering to the local GAA jersey mentality was Jim McDaid and you ran him out for town for not being a professional regional whinger or spending his time working exclusively for the Agri sector.

It is the government's repsonsibility to provide the infrastructure and to target high value industries for the region as they are the only ones with the state assets to do so - Large high Value multinationals didn't go to Cork because they like the scenery, the went there because a brilliant package was put together by the state agencies and the personal intervention of the minister was no doubt instrumental.

You are 100% right there. Again, look at the muppets you vote for. Did people in Donegal honestly beleive that Dana MEP was going to spend her time in Europe fighting for investment in peripheral regions on the edge of Europe or banning stem cell research cos it's a sin against the pope? Be honest, people in Sligo and Donegal voted for Dana for no other reason than she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970 - this is why she did nothing for the North West when she went to Europe. She was there for the American bible belt agenda - any fool could have told you so. But no, the North West wanted the little singing colleen who did Ireland proud on the telly.

These are the realities. I would argue people in the North west are as entrepreneurial as I have seen anywhere, but this spirit cannot replace the benefits of a coherent integrated state strategy for the region. This is what will deliver long term propserity.

I think there is tremendous talent and brilliant people in the North West. The problem is they are all living in Dublin and Galway because in Donegal in particiular their talent would have been seen as a danger to the mindset up there which is "keep begging and blame the Jackeens for all our problems." Donegal represents an Ireland the rest of the country left behind in the 1990's. The cultural background in the North West is a goldmine and one which most other parts of Ireland would love to have. That's you're greatest asset not giant factories in small villages on the Innishown Pennisula.

Although there is hope. I was impressed by that councillor in Glencolmchille who stopped any further bunglalow blight in the valley as he seemed to realise that protecting the beautiful scenery is more value to the location than making greedy farmers rich by destorying the view with their one-off housing landgrab.

The future of the North West is not just factories (but that has a part to play as well), it is tapping into the unique skills and talents of the locals and selling the North West as a package to the rest of the world. This has been susccessful done in remote regions in Finland, Canada and Australia. At some point the North West needs to gets it's act together and capitalise and work with all it has going for it rather than expecting to be bailed out constantly.

Stop waving the county GAA flags and thinking that is enough. The North West is holding itself back because of a myopic mindset and an inability to vote on anything in the national Interest. I agree the North West biggest mistake is to act and think like a stand alone region - the building blocks for future need to be put in place. Start by voting for politicans who look and behave like they live in the 21st Century.

Tell your media and politicians to stop blaming Dublin for all the North West's woes. You'll never get awywhere doing that. Believe it or not there are communities in Dublin which are far worse off than anywhere in the North West who have even less. Start to appriciate all the good things about the North West rather than concentrating on all the negatives and blowing them out of proportion. It you have no faith in your own ability then how will the rest of the world have faith in the North West. Stop the whinging and start the culture change.

smashey

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I agree the North West biggest mistake is to act and think like a stand alone region - the building blocks for future need to be put in place. Start by voting for politicans who look and behave like they live in the 21st Century.

Tell your media and politicians to stop blaming Dublin for all the North West's woes. You'll never get awywhere doing that. Believe it or not there are communities in Dublin which are far worse off than anywhere in the North West who have even less. Start to appriciate all the good things about the North West rather than concentrating on all the negatives and blowing them out of proportion. It you have no faith in your own ability then how will the rest of the world have faith in the North West. Stop the whinging and start the culture change.

You sound like a politician to me.

With regards to the "stand alone region" comment, given the lack of transport infrastructure we are by default. Whenever I hear all this talk of a Western rail corridor, it angers me that Sligo is as far north as it would come. What about Donegal? Do the powers that be think we might be afraid of trains?

I agree about appreciating the good things we have here. However, nice scenery will not feed the family unless we can get tourists here like they do in Kerrry. I have noticed that they still have trains in Kerry. How convenient.

In this day and age we should be able to drive to Dublin in two hours. Granted, the N2/A5 route is improving but it is still basically s**t. A good dual carriageway would make us more accessible to investors.

We have an airport here but why oh why was it located on the west coast? Surely a flat piece of land could have been found in a more central location. I have been to Derry airport on a few occassions and the number of Donegal vehicles outnumber the local cars.

I believe most of the above problems are as a direct result of central government decisions down the years.

Fitzo

muffler wrote:

Power to the people.

The North West is only as good or as bad as its residents.

Aine Chambers

Paddy20

muffler wrote:

Power to the people.

The North West is only as good or as bad as its residents.

So the purely self interested capitalists who managed to force our 'cream of the crop' to emigrate in the 50's are now 'Again being allowed' to do the same today in 2006 !.

However, it is heartening to see Residents/posters who care like Smashey raising relevant questions, that so far no one has managed to give any reasonable answers too ?...keep up the pressure 'smashey' .

I am watching this thread with increasing interest and watching what present day 'Residents' are prepared to comment upon, after all, a general election is not far off ?...

P.

muffler

Paddy20 wrote:

So the purely self interested capitalists who managed to force our 'cream of the crop' to emigrate in the 50's are now doing being allowed to do the same today in 2006 !.

Can you explain what you mean by that

Paddy20

muffler wrote:

Can you explain what you mean by that

Yep, I will be happy too, after After Paddy's day which I am already enjoying, as I hope you and yours are ?...;)

P. :cool:

muffler

Thanks Paddy.

After I win a fortune on the Gold Cup tomorrow, head to Cheers and P. Bonners and get full, smoke a lot of fags, make love to every woman that comes in contact with me, swap places with the dog after I stagger home I might be in a better position on Saturday to read your response.

Paddy20

muffler wrote:

Thanks Paddy.

After I win a fortune on the Gold Cup tomorrow, head to Cheers and P. Bonners and get full, smoke a lot of fags, make love to every woman that comes in contact with me, swap places with the dog after I stagger home I might be in a better position on Saturday to read your response.

Muffler,

Muchos gracias amigo, Mucho Understande, after all my name is Paddy/Patrick

P. :cool: