Barriers to Progress

Cody Pomeray

The question of Ireland's political viability as an independent State has come up in another thread.

Rather than drag it off topic, I thought we might look at it from another perspective.

We are a small, young island nation geographically located in a prosperous economic zone, with an educated workforce and a fairly high national income.

In theory, shouldn't it be easy for us to simply look at around at older neighbours, see which policies work, see which policies fail, and pursue our self-administration accordingly?

Yes. But there are barriers to progress. These barriers are complex, insofar as yes, they curtail progress, but they also provide an attractive payoff.

An example would be membership of the Eurozone. Our ability to manipulate the Irish money supply is taken away, but yet we enjoy less exchange rate risk and low inflation. It is anticipated that the net effect is positive.

Other barriers may have very insubstantial payoffs. These are net barriers to progress.

So my question

(1) What are the net barriers to progress in Ireland
(2) To what extent, and under what conditions, can they be eradicated?

PRAF

Depends on how you define progress. Is progress just about chasing economic growth (GDP or GNP per capita) or is it something more nuanced than that? I'm very much of the opinion that we need a more broad set of metrics by which to measure progress. IMO very high up the list of priorities are things like unemployment figures, poverty rates, innovation, entrepreneurship, educational attainment, equality, etc.

The solutions to the above right now are easy to say - create more jobs, identify & alleviate proverty, encourage innovation, invest in research, imporve educational opportunities for all, promote a less unequal society - but very hard to implement.

I'm an optimist though so I live in hope!

Cody Pomeray

Progress, in a sort of moral sense, would be a matter for the Government of the day.

But I am talking across Government departments.

The logical thing to do would simply to analyze 'best practice' abroad.

You might take the Dutch health system, the Swedish educational system, the German social protection system for example. All systems that are widely admired.

But we don't. Why?

What are the barriers?

and then

are those barriers (arguably public sector working agreements, for example) of greater value than their reforms?

belcampprisoner

the biggest barriers will be the debt the government accepted from the bond holders of the bank,
also the high mortgages people took on
can I say corruption in politics past and present,
no infrastructure, public transport and internet broadband and electricity not that great,
need more industry than agriculture and tourism or depending on American companies that put hardly any tax back into the country
emigration is the worst ,training these people that then go off to Australia, Canada, America
drugs in the country and armed gangs
still not facing up to past mistakes, like the church molesting young children or Magdalene laundries,
theres a less caring attitude in Ireland since the celtic tiger

PRAF

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Progress, in a sort of moral sense, would be a matter for the Government of the day.

But I am talking across Government departments.

The logical thing to do would simply to analyze 'best practice' abroad.

You might take the Dutch health system, the Swedish educational system, the German social protection system for example. All systems that are widely admired.

But we don't. Why?

What are the barriers?

and then

are those barriers (arguably public sector working agreements, for example) of greater value than their reforms?

Well in that case the biggest barriers are inertia, ineptitude, lack of ideas, resistance to change, the ease of just copying the Brits, parish pump politics, and vested interests.

Sometimes I think people in Ireland would prefer a broken system that they can make work for their benefit (ie no universal gp healthcare but their td fixed them up with a medical card) rather than a fixed, efficient, fair system.

p1akuw47h5r3it

PRAF wrote: »

Well in that case the biggest barriers are inertia, ineptitude, lack of ideas, resistance to change, the ease of just copying the Brits, parish pump politics, and vested interests.

Sometimes I think people in Ireland would prefer a broken system that they can make work for their benefit (ie no universal gp healthcare but their td fixed them up with a medical card) rather than a fixed, efficient, fair system.

I'd agree with this. What surprises me is that since the foundation of the state the Irish Government has consistently let its citizens down, from DeVelera's trade War against England, to the outrageous levels of taxation in 80's Ireland and finally the present day with the Celtic Tiger and subsequent mid management of the economy.

Yet no party which believes in a small government and a relatively large amount of privatisation has arisen, there also does not seem to be that large of a demand for one. I feel a small government would suit Ireland as it would be unable to interfere and mess everything up on such a big scale as it can now!

I personally believe Ireland just really do politics. Our politicians are are useless and the electorate just as bad. A small government would at least negate the effects of this somewhat.

Cody Pomeray

DanDan6592 wrote: »

since the foundation of the state the Irish Government has consistently let its citizens down, from DeVelera's trade War against England, to the outrageous levels of taxation in 80's Ireland and finally the present day with the Celtic Tiger and subsequent mid management of the economy.

Indeed, but...

I feel a small government would suit Ireland as it would be unable to interfere and mess everything up on such a big scale as it can now!

By all means the journey from protectionism to deregulation and the property bust was one from the firepan into the fire.

It surprises me to hear someone say Ireland needs a non-interfering Government.

If anyone has learned the downside of a Government delegating economic responsibility to the free market, and of delegating social responsibility to certain well known institutions, Ireland has.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Indeed, but...

By all means the journey from protectionism to deregulation and the property bust was one from the firepan into the fire.

It surprises me to hear someone say Ireland needs a non-interfering Government.

If anyone has learned the downside of a Government delegating economic responsibility to the free market, and of delegating social responsibility to certain well known institutions, Ireland has.

I completely disagree. The government did a lot of interfering, you obviously think they did not. I don't see much point debating this though because we'll just end up way off topic.

With regards social responsibility, the CC essentially was the government.

Cody Pomeray

DanDan6592 wrote: »

I completely disagree. The government did a lot of interfering

Eh...

With regards social responsibility, the CC essentially was the government.

How are these statements even compatible?

Either the Government has traditionally minimised its own governance or it has not.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Eh...
How are these statements even compatible?

Either the Government has traditionally minimised its own governance or it has not.

The CC was heavily involved in policy decisions made by the government due in no part to been given a "special place" in Irish society. You could almost argue Ireland was a theocracy.

Cody Pomeray

How can I rephrase this more clearly.

Small Government mainly denotes keeping Government intervention to a minimum.

This allowed the RC Church do intervene in its place. That was a specific result of an ideological belief in small Government , especially in social policy, going back to the foundation of the Irish state.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

How can I rephrase this more clearly.

Small Government mainly denotes keeping Government intervention to a minimum.

This allowed the RC Church do intervene in its place. That was a specific result of an ideological belief in small Government , especially in social policy, going back to the foundation of the Irish state.

The Government intervened by deliberately giving the CC a special place in Irish society.
The DeVelera was hardly a small government anyway, going by the fact that it initiated a trade war with our biggest trading partner at the time..

Pete_Cavan

I think one barrier to progress is how settlement patterns have been, and continue to be, allowed to develop in this country. Our planning systems encourage unsustainable low density, sparsely populated settlements. This makes providing infrastructure a lot more expensive than it otherwise would be and makes payback periods for infrastructure longer. We will be forever playing catch up with regard to infrastructure which will certainly hamper economic progress.

Our public transport is crap because, in order to reach a critical mass to provide sufficient passenger numbers to make a service feasible, a train has to stop at every one horse town enroute. This makes the service extremely slow and can not compete with private transport. As a result we have a car dependant society who are being hammered by the rising cost of petrol. In order to upgrade the road network accordingly, we had to start from scratch with the motorway network because all our original N roads are lined with one-off houses making online upgrades impossible. Instead we had to buy up new land and build entirely new roads. We still incur the cost of maintaining the old road except now we have to maintain twice as much road going forward. This also highlights why we have crap infrastructure in this country, our resources are too thinly spread. We spend a fortune providing broadband, water, sewerage, electricity, etc. to every house in the country with the result being every area gets a crap level of service instead of certain areas getting a good service.

There are also social problems associated with this. I remember reading about the demographic breakdown in the west of Ireland. Rural areas are losing far more women than men, an unwelcome return to a previous pattern of emigration which has obvious consequences for long term population levels. Employment for women is concentrated in the service, retail and administrative sectors. These opportunities are largely urban focussed, hence the failure to develop vibrant sustainable urban centres in these areas means that there are far fewer jobs available for women than would otherwise have been the case.

PRAF

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

I think one barrier to progress is how settlement patterns have been, and continue to be, allowed to develop in this country. Our planning systems encourage unsustainable low density, sparsely populated settlements. This makes providing infrastructure a lot more expensive than it otherwise would be and makes payback periods for infrastructure longer. We will be forever playing catch up with regard to infrastructure which will certainly hamper economic progress.

Our public transport is crap because, in order to reach a critical mass to provide sufficient passenger numbers to make a service feasible, a train has to stop at every one horse town enroute. This makes the service extremely slow and can not compete with private transport. As a result we have a car dependant society who are being hammered by the rising cost of petrol. In order to upgrade the road network accordingly, we had to start from scratch with the motorway network because all our original N roads are lined with one-off houses making online upgrades impossible. Instead we had to buy up new land and build entirely new roads. We still incur the cost of maintaining the old road except now we have to maintain twice as much road going forward. This also highlights why we have crap infrastructure in this country, our resources are too thinly spread. We spend a fortune providing broadband, water, sewerage, electricity, etc. to every house in the country with the result being every area gets a crap level of service instead of certain areas getting a good service.

There are also social problems associated with this. I remember reading about the demographic breakdown in the west of Ireland. Rural areas are losing far more women than men, an unwelcome return to a previous pattern of emigration which has obvious consequences for long term population levels. Employment for women is concentrated in the service, retail and administrative sectors. These opportunities are largely urban focussed, hence the failure to develop vibrant sustainable urban centres in these areas means that there are far fewer jobs available for women than would otherwise have been the case.

New planning regulator on the way at long last. Hopefully this can end, or at least curtail, the reckless planning that has blighted our country

Cody Pomeray

DanDan6592 wrote: »

The Government intervened by deliberately giving the CC a special place in Irish society.

Sure now you're only bending over backwards to develop a logic around your pre established opinion.

By the above logic, anyone could attempt to call Government policy a deliberate intervention not to intervene when it doesn't work out, and small Government policy of non-intervention when it does work out.

From 1922 - 1932, and from 1957 to the present day, the Irish Government's most enduring characteristic has been a chronic fear of its own shadow. I am acknowledging a 25 year window of extreme intervention.

But from the early days of the state, and its infamously conservative Department of Finance, through to the Mother and Child Scheme, through to the emigration of the 1980s and the property bubble of the noughties, "stay out of that" has been our most abiding sovereign trait.

We are the only state in the European Union never to have really controlled our own currency for God's sake! How's that for non-intervention.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Sure now you're only bending over backwards to develop a logic around your pre established opinion.

By the above logic, anyone could attempt to call Government policy a deliberate intervention not to intervene when it doesn't work out, and small Government policy of non-intervention when it does work out.

From 1922 - 1932, and from 1957 to the present day, the Irish Government's most enduring characteristic has been a chronic fear of its own shadow. I am acknowledging a 25 year window of extreme intervention.

But from the early days of the state, and its infamously conservative Department of Finance, through to the Mother and Child Scheme, through to the emigration of the 1980s and the property bubble of the noughties, "stay out of that" has been our most abiding sovereign trait.

We are the only state in the European Union never to have really controlled our own currency for God's sake! How's that for non-intervention.

No I'm not. How you can believe Ireland has had small non-interventionist governments is beyond me. DeVeleras trade war, marriage bars, huge taxation in the 80's, the Mother and Child scheme which simply resulted in a two tier help system we have now.

DeVelera gave one single institution a huge amount of power (which is not something a small government would do) because he was a die hard catholic not because he believed in a small non-interventionist government. This turned out to be a disaster as we all know.

Cody Pomeray

DanDan6592 wrote: »

No I'm not. How you can believe Ireland has had small non-interventionist governments is beyond me. DeVeleras trade war, marriage bars, huge taxation in the 80's, the Mother and Child scheme which simply resulted in a two tier help system we have now.

• I specifically mentioned the 25 year DeValeraen exception
• You're citing the failure of the Mother & Child scheme as "interventionism"/ 'big government'; are you even serious?

I feel you have an ideological axe to grind here; you're determined to view historical Irish governance as 'big government' when in fact, most people would accept that delegation and fear of its own statutory authority characterised the majority of Irish independence.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

• I specifically mentioned the 25 year DeValeraen exception
• You're citing the failure of the Mother & Child scheme as "interventionism"/ 'big government'; are you even serious?

I feel you have an ideological axe to grind here; you're determined to view historical Irish governance as 'big government' when in fact, most people would accept that delegation and fear of its own statutory authority characterised the majority of Irish independence.

No I don't. DeVelera gave the Church a special rle, essentially resulting in the CC and the irish government becoming one. It was the work of a religious fanatic, nothing else. To suggest it was the result of small government is nonsense. If anyone has an ideological axe to grind it's you.

A small government doesn't "delegate" it's power to one large religious organisation. DeVelera basically created a theocracy, where the needs and image of the CC came first over the needs and wants of the irish population. It's only relatively recently that we have seen a seperation of church and state.

The mother and Child scheme failed due to fierce opposition to the church, which as I've said essentially ran the governemt/country. Browne said in his resignation:

the Catholic Hierarchy has informed the Government that they must regard the Mother and Child scheme proposed by me as opposed to Catholic social teaching. This decision I, as a Catholic, immediately accepted without hesitation

.

The reason it was a disaster is not because of small government, but because the CC church said it was wrong.

hatrickpatrick

In theory, shouldn't it be easy for us to simply look at around at older neighbours, see which policies work, see which policies fail, and pursue our self-administration accordingly?

Actually in my view this is exactly what holds back progress. Stop looking at other countries - no country has got it right so far - and think outside the box. Why do we have to model our nation on others instead of starting from scratch with original ideas? From our system of currency to our system of government, they are all lifted from other countries, none of which is particularly successful in terms of quality of life, happiness, efficiency, etc.

In my view, we should go back to the drawing board and, with absolutely no terms of reference whatsoever, have a wide discussion of what ideas on how to run a country might work and what ideas might not. Exact same for money supply, and indeed the concept of what money actually is to begin with.

In my opinion, it's the general reluctance to remove parameters / restrictions on how widely we look at reform that's holding us back. We should come at this from the point of view of "no institutions currently exist, what do you create?" rather than "how can we reform existing broken institutions to try and make them a little bit better?"

Cody Pomeray

DanDan6592 wrote: »

No I don't. DeVelera gave the Church a special rle, essentially resulting in the CC and the irish government becoming one. It was the work of a religious fanatic, nothing else. To suggest it was the result of small government is nonsense.

Except I didn't Dan. This is my third time pointing out that the DeValera period was a major exception, you can go back and look at it in black and white. If you're not even reading the response you're getting I think it's best to leave that there.

Cody Pomeray

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Actually in my view this is exactly what holds back progress. Stop looking at other countries - no country has got it right so far - and think outside the box. Why do we have to model our nation on others instead of starting from scratch with original ideas?

What would be the benefit of that?

There is no such thing as a silver bullet for public policy and nobody expects to invent one.

However, we know there are some pretty damn great policies out there, and sometimes we can even agree what they are. I gave some examples above.

I'm not seeing the motivation for 'coming up with it ourselves' when some great solutions exist, which we can modify if needs be.

p1akuw47h5r3it

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

Except I didn't Dan. This is my third time pointing out that the DeValera period was a major exception, you can go back and look at it in black and white. If you're not even reading the response you're getting I think it's best to leave that there.

But my point is that as result of his actions, we have always had a relatively big government as the CC has essentially ran the country. And in fairness, I said right from the beginning we would disagree on this:

I completely disagree. The government did a lot of interfering, you obviously think they did not. I don't see much point debating this though because we'll just end up way off topic.

hatrickpatrick

Cody Pomeray wrote: »

What would be the benefit of that?

There is no such thing as a silver bullet for public policy and nobody expects to invent one.

However, we know there are some pretty damn great policies out there, and sometimes we can even agree what they are. I gave some examples above.

I'm not seeing the motivation for 'coming up with it ourselves' when some great solutions exist, which we can modify if needs be.

I suppose that's why our opinion differs - from where I'm standing, none of the solutions already in existence seem all that great to me.

Interesting thought: Are there any countries out there where the majority of the people are satisfied that they're being run very well? Where you don't find most people grumbling about their government, and where there aren't laws or practices in existence which are so out of touch that the majority of the people just ignore them?

Personally I can't think of any, which says to me that the entire concept of how we run countries should be looked at from a drawing board perspective. Do we need the established structures at all? Could we come up with better ones instead?

FTA69

DanDan6592 wrote: »

No I don't. DeVelera gave the Church a special rle, essentially resulting in the CC and the irish government becoming one.

In fairness all De Valera did when he drafted the constitution was to state the obvious. Church domination of Irish society did not begin with De Valera. Do you think he was any more a conservative Catholic ideologue than the likes of Costello? The Church controlled Ireland's national schools long before independence and their influence permeated through Irish society as much pre independence as after it. Arguably Paul Cullen was a far greater force in institutionalising Catholicism in Ireland.

Cody Pomeray

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Interesting thought: Are there any countries out there where the majority of the people are satisfied that they're being run very well?

Doubtful, but I'm not suggesting adapting another jurisdiction's domestic policy en masse. I think there are a lot of individuals in EU countries who would agree that individual domestic policies - e.g. maybe educational, or health care, or employment - are working well.

I'm suggesting we behave as we we do in every walk of life as individuals, employees, employers or organizations: observe what works elsewhere, modify and improve it if necessary, and employ it.

It's a pretty standard cornerstone of human development.

We can take it policy by policy, e.g. Dutch health policy, Swedish school educational policy, and German welfare and labour policy. Obviously some people won't agree that these policies suit their own moral objectives, I'm just using them as examples correspondent with my own outlook.

COYW

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Actually in my view this is exactly what holds back progress. Stop looking at other countries - no country has got it right so far - and think outside the box. Why do we have to model our nation on others instead of starting from scratch with original ideas? From our system of currency to our system of government, they are all lifted from other countries, none of which is particularly successful in terms of quality of life, happiness, efficiency, etc.

But other countries haven't gotten it completely wrong also. I think it would be daft to pay no attention to the successes that other countries have when thinking about improving our own country, the RoI. I have lived abroad and can say without doubt that I have had an excellent quality of life, work-life balance, call it what you will. I would love to see the social culture, attitude to alcohol, working week that I experienced in France in this country.