Urban/rural Ireland...where are we going?

BluntGuy

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Why compare it to a "similar sized town" in the UK, though ? Why not compare it to the UK's third largest CITY in order to compare like with like ?

Because you know it's not like with like. The third largest CITY in the UK, has many multiples of Limerick's population. As said:

Ireland is a small country and every city except Dublin is small in an international context, we have to plan being cognisant of that reality.

Or else go the whole hog in the direction that you're trying and decide which "similarly sized town" to Dublin in the UK got a BILLION euro not to create a bypass, but to add ONE LANE, not to mention the toll buyout and the development of the Luas and DART ?

The billion euro has done more than add one lane Liam, you know this. It paid to remove the toll booths and to upgrade many of the junctions, as well as add a further auxillary lane in some parts. I've already agreed previously on the thread that if the M50 had been built properly in the first place such expenditure would not have been necessary.

You can't argue it both ways; either Dublin is comparable to London with Limerick comparable to the third largest city, or else both should be comparable to similarly sized towns.

I never compared Dublin to London though.

Your metric is disingenuous. Find me a "town" of 500,000-600,000 with a metropolitan population of over 1 million in the UK, then.

I'd be more interested in ensuring that all cities were properly interconnected to allow for transport and tourism. Rosslare is not easily accessible, forcing transport through - surprise surprise - Dublin Port.

I'm all for the link between Cork and Limerick, which has unfortunately been deferred.

Your example is farcical for the reasons outlined above. Show me where a "similar size town" in the UK got anywhere near the funding that Dublin has ?

Compare Dublin to Glasgow which is of a similar size and you'll quickly appreciate how underpowered our public transport network is. But you want me to find a similar-sized town, because it suits your argument based on semantics.

Yes. Dublin being one of them, if you insist on your "similar size town" parallel instead of comparing first, second and third cities. But you haven't done that because that consistency would undermine your argument completely.

I'm not comparing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd cities because it makes no sense to do so. Why would I compare Limerick to a city with multiple times its population? Why would I compare Dublin to a city with multiple times its population?

One has to compare settlements of a similar size when making these comparisons. You're trying to get me to use a system of comparison which makes no sense, based on semantics and irrelevant rankings.

I am, based on the many farcical references to "middle of nowhere" and "isolation" in this thread despite me being far far nearer than Leixlip or Maynooth.

References I didn't make, nor imply. I feel like you're replying to me as though I'm attacking you personally, which I'm not.

I want to work out the bits we can agree on and then debate out the parts we don't.

Because city living is unsustainable and unplanned. If we all went to electric cars tomorrow I can park on my driveway and charge my car overnight; I would suggest that 60% of city and suburban dwellers could not.

Which is more sustainable and forward-thinking now ?

City living is unsustainable and unplanned if it's allowed to progress as a messy sprawl. On what basis do you think 60% of city and surburban dwellers wouldn't be able to do this though?

John_Rambo

Liam Byrne wrote: »

I would suggest that 60% of city and suburban dwellers could not

You are so unbelievably off the mark Liam. How you came to that figure just shows you what you know about Dublin.

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Indeed, while DART and Luas could be viewed as successes, the fact that the M50 was upgraded in preference to providing additional facilities means that the urban utopia of public transport isn't even in the minds of most of those who can avail of it, let alone anyone else.

FFS Liam, people use the M50 etc. because public transport in Dublin is sh!te (Cork fairs even worse). The 3 initiatives taken to really improve public transport have all proven hugely popular: DART in 1984 (half finished, the Maynooth line was supposed to also be electrified and the line to Tallaght was supposed to be built, none of which happened), the Luas (hugely oversubscribed to the extent it requires no operating subsidy which is unusual for public transport anywhere) and indeed the couple of genuinely Quality bus corridors (46A for example). So, given a choice, Dubliners at least will jump at the chance of using public transport, if it can get them to work in any sort of reasonable time frame.

The M50 forms the hub of Ireland's entire motorway network. It would need to be the width it is regardless. There are still wider motorways in Belfast btw

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Edit : Just to be helpful - Glasgow, Birmingham or Leeds are of comparable sizes to Dublin, so you can use those.

Well, if you're gonna bring Glasgow into it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lIfubhHZDQ

For those not interested in that 3 part 30 minute video, it was made in the late 1970's and discusses Glasgow's integrated transport system, that absolutely knocks the spots off Dublin's excuse for one. Glasgow achieved this decades ago, and we are still dithering about building up our cities at all, for fear the politicians might upset the rural vote (and it's clear from this thread that they are easily upset: the mere mention of cities holding on to more of their generated wealth has driven many here ballistic).

Birmingham also does the business. I've never been to Leeds so can't comment.

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

.....as will any motorway or rail line that doesn't nonsensically spoke towards Dublin. You're suggesting that commerce and transport infrastructure be relegated to provide a bypass for a city that decided to sprawl because too many people moved there.

What do you think would the reaction have been in Cork and Limerick had the NRA decided to prioritise the M20 over the M7 and M8? The fact is that most Dubs don't use nor need the spoked motorways. It's non-Dubliners that they mostly serve. Dublin port lies directly across from Holyhead, which is motorway (effectively) connected (the A55 is largely built to motorway standards). This means goods sent via Dublin port get to the UK market faster as they are straight onto a motorway in Wales.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

I'd be more interested in ensuring that all cities were properly interconnected to allow for transport and tourism. Rosslare is not easily accessible, forcing transport through - surprise surprise - Dublin Port.

See above: Fishguard and Pembroke are not motorway connected. The M4 stops well short of both of them. Rosslare itself is well connected to the Eastern Seaboard and anyway, is not the only port besides Dublin...there's Cork and Waterford (Belview) as well as some smaller ports along the East Coast and of course there's the NI ports.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Your example is farcical for the reasons outlined above. Show me where a "similar size town" in the UK got anywhere near the funding that Dublin has ?

See my videos about Glasgow above. Similar population, similar size, far superior infrastructure.

goose2005

Liam Byrne wrote: »

You can't argue it both ways; either Dublin is comparable to London with Limerick comparable to the third largest city, or else both should be comparable to similarly sized towns.

Glasgow, Birmingham and Leeds are not capital cities or major ports. If Limerick were in the UK it would be about the 80th biggest town, smaller than Crawley or Exeter.

.....as will any motorway or rail line that doesn't nonsensically spoke towards Dublin. You're suggesting that commerce and transport infrastructure be relegated to provide a bypass for a city that decided to sprawl because too many people moved there.

"Too many people moved there" because Ireland utterly failed to develop its other cities into places that companies would want to set up or young people would want to move.

I'd be more interested in ensuring that all cities were properly interconnected to allow for transport and tourism. Rosslare is not easily accessible, forcing transport through - surprise surprise - Dublin Port.

Rosslare is a tiny town in the SE corner of the country; much of what comes in at Dublin is bound for Dublin, the west, Northern Ireland, N Leinster, etc., all of which are closer to Dublin than Rosslare and thus cheaper.

Because city living is unsustainable and unplanned. If we all went to electric cars tomorrow I can park on my driveway and charge my car overnight; I would suggest that 60% of city and suburban dwellers could not.

That's an utterly ludicrous statement. Living at high population densities is far more sustainable, more efficient and less environmentally damaging than living at low densities. It allows for more coherent planning and better overall service delivery.

The main reason the rest of the country does so poorly is that every town/county wants its own stuff. Kerry/Waterford people, for example, wouldn't listen if told that Cork city's expansion would help their region; they're not interested if it's more than 10 miles away. Decentralisation is a good example - if the civil service had been moved, one third to Cork and one third to Limerick it would have been a real shot in the arm, but as it was every tiny town had to get a few, and it was all spread too evenly, too thinly.

Godge

BluntGuy wrote: »

.

@Liam, I think it was "Godge" who referred to Limerick as a "mid-sized town" or such. I don't think it was meant to be disparaging, simply that if you even look across to the UK, there are many towns of similar size to Limerick. Very few of them would have received €600 million tunnels either, along with the M7/M20 motorway upgrades. Indeed, even now work is being carried out upgrading the M7/N24 junction, and improvements to the University if I'm not mistaken are either in planning or being carried out.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Disparaging / factually incorrect or whatever; it was pathetic and showed that facts were not going to be part of the debate.

Yes, it was me and the main comparison I was making was with Dublin 15. As for facts, you should know by now that I don't make such comparisons without some basis in fact. So here we go.

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/Tables.pdf


Page 28 gives populations by constituency.

Dublin West (99% Dublin 15) is 117,126, Limerick City is 102,121.


Table 1 on page 21 gives a figure for Limerick City as 56,779. Fingal is 239,992 of which Dublin 15 is at least half.

Those are the facts. But hey let's compare Limerick to the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_United_Kingdom_settlements_by_population

If we take the 102,121 figure we get either St. Helens or Woking. Have heard of Woking but don't know the other one.

56,779 is equivalent to Hereford or Dartford but smaller than Bangor in Northern Ireland or Rhondda in Wales, not to mention Maidenhead or Margate.


Now Dublin, 1,187,176, gosh we won't include Bray or Maynooth, Leixlip or Dunboyne, we will just stick to the city. It is bigger than all except London. So let us look at Birmingham, the second city.

http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/train93/NetworkMap.aspx

Rail looks healthier than Dublin.

http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/metro/trammap.aspx

They have a metro as well, dublin's is stopped.

http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/web/FILES/BirminghamWEB.pdf

buses look great.

So to sum up, Liam, I am happy to stick with the facts. I have shown that Dublin is worse off than Birmingham which is smaller than Dublin, maybe you could demonstrate how Limerick is worse off than Maidenhead or Bangor? Look, the facts show that it is not disparaging, factually incorrect or whatever to show that Limerick is smaller than Dublin 15 and is comparable to great cities like Maidenhead or Bangor.

Show me I am wrong and I will concede the point.

Liam Byrne

Bluntguy wrote:

Compare Dublin to Glasgow which is of a similar size and you'll quickly appreciate how underpowered our public transport network is. But you want me to find a similar-sized town, because it suits your argument based on semantics.

Incorrect. I was requesting that people who kept comparing Limerick to "similar sized towns in the UK" be consistent and compare Dublin to a similar sized town; since Limerick is a city, the semantics weren't mine - the issue was comparing similar-sized population areas, which is why I put the misnomer in question in quotation marks; you are introducing your own red herring by taking it literally and missing the point in the process.

I clearly highlighted 3 options.

Those cities may well have decent transport, however the thread is about the allocation of resources, and I would gladly concede if Glasgow or Leeds has had a proportional level of expenditure on their infrastructure based on the UK's larger population and tax take.......since Dublin has had a billion spent on it in the example outlined, and since the UK population (and therefore tax take and resources) is over 12 times the size of Ireland, the valid comparison is whether 12 billion was spent on the transport system in Glasgow or Leeds.

I would even doubt that a direct one-for-one billion was spent on it, but if anyone has exact figures then I'm all ears.

All I'm asking is for people to compare like with like honestly and openly.

And to be fair to Bluntguy yes - you didn't compare Dublin with London, so not everything I said was directed solely at you.....but as you can see from subsequent posts above, some other people are happy to view "capitals" as somehow equivalent while trying to minimise the relative and equivalent comparisons, which is a dishonest tactic to bolster their argument.

Liam Byrne

Godge wrote:

Yes, it was me and the main comparison I was making was with Dublin 15. As for facts, you should know by now that I don't make such comparisons without some basis in fact.

Well then don't use the word "town" when talking about a city, because it is factually incorrect, disparaging and undermines your argument since it does come across as refusing to accept facts.

Don't shoot the messenger for pulling you up on it.

Liam Byrne

City living is unsustainable and unplanned if it's allowed to progress as a messy sprawl. On what basis do you think 60% of city and surburban dwellers wouldn't be able to do this though?

Most urban houses and apartments have insufficient parking as it is (one car space for a three-bedroom house if you're lucky, or else parking is an extra paid-for arrangement with a multi-story down the street; many terraced houses have no parking spot at all and people have to park in footpaths.

How do you propose that those people plug in their cars at night, to their own electricity supply ?

MadsL

Liam Byrne wrote: »

How do you propose that those people plug in their cars at night, to their own electricity supply ?

As they live in cities perhaps they won't need to, charging their cars at fast cycle charging stations or at work. Or perhaps on street as they park.

Having sufficient population density to support such schemes will mean that they won't have to rely on something as quaint as having to plug your car into your own supply.

Anyway, car-sharing schemes will mean that the concept of 'owning' a car will be viewed as rather backward and 'culchie'.

Was rather baffled recently when I saw the plans for the revised Smithfield parking, the architect looked rather put out when I asked him why, since they had put 3 phase power into Smithfield, they hadn't included one or six charging stations at the top of the square.

Those shaping our future unfortunately have minds shaped by the past...

John_Rambo

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Most urban houses and apartments have insufficient parking as it is (one car space for a three-bedroom house if you're lucky, or else parking is an extra paid-for arrangement with a multi-story down the street; many terraced houses have no parking spot at all and people have to park in footpaths.

How do you propose that those people plug in their cars at night, to their own electricity supply ?

60%.... you're just coming up with numbers off the top of your head Liam. How many people in Dublin do you know that have to park their car in a multi story car park down a street?? Never heard of this, most apartment blocks have underground parking with power that could easily have retrofitted metered points, or a compressed air point. A lot of the terraced houses you talk about have lanes and sheds at the back, a lot of people have knocked those sheds if they are to small to park a modern car in the back. Again, it would be easy to retrofit a lockable power or air point an the pavement. A lot of people in flats in the city centre don't have cars, they bike it or use public transport. Cycling is huge in Dublin too, thousands of people cycle in and out of work.

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Most urban houses and apartments have insufficient parking as it is (one car space for a three-bedroom house if you're lucky, or else parking is an extra paid-for arrangement with a multi-story down the street; many terraced houses have no parking spot at all and people have to park in footpaths.

How do you propose that those people plug in their cars at night, to their own electricity supply ?

Ideally, when a city has adequate public transport, one doesn't need a car to begin with. Here in Berlin I don't bother with one, having always had either a car or motorbike in Dublin, given my commute was not possible with any degree of ease on Dublin's crap public transport "network". I pay €600 a year for my public transport ticket that allows me to use all modes all day and night. My bus route runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. My S Bahn line (like DART) runs 24 hours at weekends and only stops from 1am to 4am during the week, when a bus replaces it! Cities in Germany and pretty much everywhere else in Europe get the infrastructure they need. Why are Irish cities the exception?

Fr Tod Umptious

murphaph wrote: »

Ideally, when a city has adequate public transport, one doesn't need a car to begin with. Here in Berlin I don't bother with one, having always had either a car or motorbike in Dublin, given my commute was not possible with any degree of ease on Dublin's crap public transport "network". I pay €600 a year for my public transport ticket that allows me to use all modes all day and night. My bus route runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. My S Bahn line (like DART) runs 24 hours at weekends and only stops from 1am to 4am during the week, when a bus replaces it! Cities in Germany and pretty much everywhere else in Europe get the infrastructure they need. Why are Irish cities the exception?

To answer the specific question in bold I think it is just a case of history.

Germany has been an industrialized and rich nation for well over 100 years, and the infrastructure that you see today has been build up over that time.

Ireland on the other had has only been rich since 13th July 1994 or there abouts and thus the infrastructure has not developed at the same rate.

Godge

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Well then don't use the word "town" when talking about a city, because it is factually incorrect, disparaging and undermines your argument since it does come across as refusing to accept facts.

Don't shoot the messenger for pulling you up on it.

I said Limerick was a large town by UK standards. I then got numbers for population centres in the UK. At best Limerick is comparable to Woking or St. Helens, both of which are large towns.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Helens,_Merseyside


In reality it may be closer to smaller towns as I demonstrated in a previous post. So while Limerick may be designated a city, in real terms of size, it is a large town.

Liam Byrne

Godge wrote: »

I said Limerick was a large town by UK standards.

But Limerick isn't in the UK, and Dublin is "a tiny capital city by UK standards", except UK standards are irrelevant in this country.

In reality it may be closer to smaller towns as I demonstrated in a previous post. So while Limerick may be designated a city, in real terms of size, it is a large town.

"may be" ? :rolleyes: You really, really don't handle facts that you dislike well, do you ?

Breathe deeply, clear your mind and say it : Limerick IS a city.

Tipp Man

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

To answer the specific question in bold I think it is just a case of history.

Germany has been an industrialized and rich nation for well over 100 years, and the infrastructure that you see today has been build up over that time.

Ireland on the other had has only been rich since 13th July 1994 or there abouts and thus the infrastructure has not developed at the same rate.

Well this is it in a nutshell

You can't expect Ireland which only experienced prosperity in the last 20 odd years to have the same infrastructure as Germany or UK etc who have spent all of the 20th century developing their systems. And this prosperity has proved to be short lived so it will have a direct effect on infrastructural programmes

Infrastructure is an asset and as any business person will tell you asset building takes a long time - no different for a country

Liam Byrne

goose2005 wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

You can't argue it both ways; either Dublin is comparable to London with Limerick comparable to the third largest city, or else both should be comparable to similarly sized towns.

Glasgow, Birmingham and Leeds are not capital cities or major ports. If Limerick were in the UK it would be about the 80th biggest town, smaller than Crawley or Exeter.

Oh, so we're saving Dublin from the direct comparison because it's a "capital city" now ?

Or is it because it's a "major port" ?

As I said, the lengths some people will go to on this thread to avoid comparing like with like and suit their own agenda is a joke.

Either (a) compare by size or (b) compare by status.....don't mix and match; or if you do, don't expect me to bother debating based on mix-and-match statistics.

As for the reference re charging points, I said that I "would guess", and - unlike some in this thread - I am open to correction.

Anyway, I don't believe that anyone will be convinced to change their predefined bias (and in some cases, outright prejudice), and the suggestions outlined by the OP - given that they're based on just "taking" natural resources from other counties while keeping all their own - is hilarious! Or would be, if it weren't being proposed on a more serious part of boards than AH.

OssianSmyth

Industrialisation boosted cities but a high tech economy will do so further. The key resource for high-tech companies is specialised staff, so both these high value staff and these companies locate in cities to reach each other. The dream of a nation of teleworkers has not materialised: physical proximity is still important.

Ireland is steadily urbanising. The UN tracks urbanisation here:
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.htm

Dublin City Council's recent report on demographics takes this data to look at urbanisation in Ireland vs the world.


http://www.creativedublinalliance.ie/assets/2012/02/Dublin-Demography-Report-Jan-2012.pdf

There has been come success in densifying parts of Dublin but overall the pattern is sprawl. Irish cities other than Dublin have been in population/density decline for years.

Energy prices may force more rapid urbanisation in future.

Poor urban transport effectively limits the available workforce. If you site a company in Coolock, you can't expect to employ someone from Rathfarnham because the journey time by private or public transport is too long. So the available population to be workers or customers of a firm is less than the city population. Dublin loses strength in this way.

At this time of record low construction costs and record high unemployment, the state has chosen to halt all urban public transport projects. Instead the money is spent on things like subsidising RTE (€196m/year) to luxuriate in its 30 acre campus in Dublin 4. These are the spending choices that society makes. When the economy begins to grow again and the city gridlocks, this is when people will start to think about planning public transport in Dublin again.

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Either (a) compare by size or (b) compare by status.....don't mix and match; or if you do, don't expect me to bother debating based on mix-and-match statistics.

Comparisons by size work fine. Glasgow and Birmingham are similar sizes to Dublin but have immeasurably better public transport and general infrastructure.

Irish politicians raced to build the inter urban motorway network so they could "satisfy" the rural vote. Then the money (largely generated by the cities) ran out and now the cities have nothing much to show for it.

As for the "Germany have infrastructure because they had time" argument...we had 20 years of boom to start an underground line, even just one underground line in Dublin...never happened. Dublin (and Cork for sure) have been absolutely starved of the infrastructure they need as modern European cities, while motorways have been built apace.

Godge

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Oh, so we're saving Dublin from the direct comparison because it's a "capital city" now ?

Or is it because it's a "major port" ?

As I said, the lengths some people will go to on this thread to avoid comparing like with like and suit their own agenda is a joke.

Either (a) compare by size or (b) compare by status.....don't mix and match; or if you do, don't expect me to bother debating based on mix-and-match statistics.

As for the reference re charging points, I said that I "would guess", and - unlike some in this thread - I am open to correction.

Anyway, I don't believe that anyone will be convinced to change their predefined bias (and in some cases, outright prejudice), and the suggestions outlined by the OP - given that they're based on just "taking" natural resources from other counties while keeping all their own - is hilarious! Or would be, if it weren't being proposed on a more serious part of boards than AH.

I compared Dublin to Birmingham earlier in this thread providing links to maps of Birmingham's public transport system (I didn't provide links to Dublin's, maybe I should) Birmingham, smaller than Dublin, had an immeasurably better public transport system.

As for comparing like to like, Limerick is comparable to large towns like Woking or Maidenhead or somewhere like that.

jmayo

murphaph wrote: »

I think you're the first person on the thread to mention "culchies". Can I bring "Jackeens" into it as well?

Ehh no I wasn't, but fire ahead call yourself whatever.

Leafing through the posts, too bloomin many to individually answer, the crux of our problems is not that people live in countryside versus city/town, it is all down to poor long term planning strategies, the way our political system works looking at short term goals and the pi** poor implementation of projects when they do go ahead.

There is a need and justification for the M50 and motorways interconnecting major urban areas (i.e. cities in Irish terms) .
But there is also a need for a major public transit system within the greater Dublin area in particular.
What did we get but half ar**ed projects that involved huge wastage of public money and questionable cosy sweetheart deals with private sector entities that gave them cash cows at the peoples expense.

There should be 4 major urban areas that are capable of attracting investment that leads to jobs and ultimately population growth.
Dublin would be the primary with Cork, Limerick and Galway next in line.
Deciding to just develop Dublin at the expense of everywhere else is only going to lead to more problems down the road.

We also have to view the other cities relative to Dublin in an Irish context, not in terms of Britain or anywhere else.

Liam Byrne

murphaph wrote: »

Comparisons by size work fine. Glasgow and Birmingham are similar sizes to Dublin but have immeasurably better public transport and general infrastructure.

OK - so now we're actually comparing like with like....good.

Now, let's get back to YOUR core point, which was related to resources and spending power, not what was provided.

Was a billion spent on Glasgow or Birmingham (or, as I said - taking the UK's proportional / relative extra revenue into account, 12 billion :eek: ?)

Is it simply that ridiculously over-budget projects in this country have swallowed up the available capital spending, ensuring that the other worthwhile stuff doesn't get off the ground ?

As myself, jmayo and Bluntguy have already highlighted, is it that the existing monies spent on the ill-thought-out "ring" roads (conveniently passing cronies' "agricultural" land which suddenly gets rezoned, necessitating a further-out "ring ring road") just gets wasted completely as a result ?

Foghladh

I don't think anybody could argue the case that rural living is as economical as an urban environment when it comes to providing like-for-like services. Patently it can't be. Where the population is spread further apart it will cost more to connect them be it with roads or services. High density will be of more economic sense than low density everytime. The question I suppose is whether economic value should be striven for at the cost of forcing people to abandon the rural lifestyle.

And that's what it would be a case of. It's easy to say that people can continue to live in their chosen environment. But if services are withdrawn or downgraded to a particular community as the price of maintaining higher standard services to a larger group, then that's tantamount to forcing that smaller group to move.

Is that a good thing? Well, it's a predictable response you'll get I suppose. People already living in cities will proclaim yes, people with homes and properties outside the city will shout no. As I've posted earlier, I personally think it will gradually happen anyway but hopefully to a more dispersed urban network which can network off each other.

murphaph

Liam Byrne wrote: »

OK - so now we're actually comparing like with like....good.

Now, let's get back to YOUR core point, which was related to resources and spending power, not what was provided.

Was a billion spent on Glasgow or Birmingham (or, as I said - taking the UK's proportional / relative extra revenue into account, 12 billion :eek: ?)

Is it simply that ridiculously over-budget projects in this country have swallowed up the available capital spending, ensuring that the other worthwhile stuff doesn't get off the ground ?

As myself, jmayo and Bluntguy have already highlighted, is it that the existing monies spent on the ill-thought-out "ring" roads (conveniently passing cronies' "agricultural" land which suddenly gets rezoned, necessitating a further-out "ring ring road") just gets wasted completely as a result ?

My core point is actually about how political representation is lacking for urban areas, hence the half hearted urban infrastructure. I assert that a properly functioning executive mayor for Dublin (and certainly Cork) would and should be able to make major improvements to the cities' infrastructure, IF the cities were allowed to keep more of their wealth.

Saying "Dublin got a billion and wasted it" is a silly argument: these projects were largely driven by national agencies or state bodies (NRA, RPA) not by a directly elected mayor with responsibility for Dublin. I could equally argue that none of the inter urban motorways should have been built due to cost over runs on the earlier schemes.

Balmed Out

You seem to think its a completely one way system. You always mention Cork and Dublin cities. What about rural Cork. Its pharmaceutical industries include most of the worlds major players. As a spin off most of these compnaies have commercial / financial offices in Dublin. Were one nation and in my book its important that we try to develop the entire country. Up till recent times rural Ireland was pretty much ignored, we had to invest in what would pay back most and quickest. That doesnt mean that areas benefiting from that should cast off everywhere else.
As an aside there are plenty of urban schools with pupil numbers in the mid 20's or less and plenty of rural schools where its in the early thirties.

Liam Byrne

murphaph wrote: »

My core point is actually about how political representation is lacking for urban areas, hence the half hearted urban infrastructure. I assert that a properly functioning executive mayor for Dublin (and certainly Cork) would and should be able to make major improvements to the cities' infrastructure, IF the cities were allowed to keep more of their wealth.

They don't need to "keep more of [sic] their [/sic] wealth" if they didn't waste it.

murphaph wrote: »

Saying "Dublin got a billion and wasted it" is a silly argument: these projects were largely driven by national agencies or state bodies (NRA, RPA) not by a directly elected mayor with responsibility for Dublin. I could equally argue that none of the inter urban motorways should have been built due to cost over runs on the earlier schemes.

No, that wouldn't be "equally arguing" at all; what you could argue is that the other required projects nationwide can't be built due to the ridiculous cost overruns to date, and you'd be right.

fly_agaric

Germany has been an industrialized and rich nation for well over 100 years, and the infrastructure that you see today has been build up over that time.

Ireland on the other had has only been rich since 13th July 1994 or there abouts and thus the infrastructure has not developed at the same rate.

Well this is it in a nutshell

You can't expect Ireland which only experienced prosperity in the last 20 odd years to have the same infrastructure as Germany or UK etc who have spent all of the 20th century developing their systems.

Not to "Godwin" this thread but... didn't some fellow with a mustache start a war in which alot of Germany's infrastructure was reduced to rubble in the mid 20th century?
Can anyone deny that Dublin's public transport system 2011 is poor given 15 years of an economic boom and even longer with structual funds available from Europe?

Tipp Man

fly_agaric wrote: »

Not to "Godwin" this thread but... didn't some fellow with a mustache start a war in which alot of Germany's infrastructure was reduced to rubble in the mid 20th century?

Indeed, but this allowed them to start from scratch with a blank canvas so to speak

Foghladh

@murphaph

Let's assume that there was a decision to set-up a Greater Dublin Authority, complete with an elected mayor, city representitives etc.
What level of autonomy would you like to see the authority holding? What services would you like to see handed over? What revenue streams would be assumed by the new body?