Baby boom generation starting to retire in or around 2030

BrianD3

Last winter I had to get some plumbing work done in the house, the labour cost was about 1000 euro and that's for a plumber plus apprentice for considerably less than a day's work. It wasn't exactly "back breaking" like people try to portay it as. There's no shortage of work even in rural Ireland and there is great potential for self employment. These guys are cleaning up and fair play to them, they have a useful, in demand skill. They'll have no difficulty buying a house or houses plus their skills mean that buying a cheap doer-upper is an option.

I know another fella who installs and services boilers and he takes at least 6 months of the year off as he makes enough during the peak winter months. Has never left his home area for work. He has children and is around to look after elderly relatives etc.

Some of my cousins are in the heating and plumbing business. Left school at 15. Multi millionaires, I'm talking about wealth comfortably into 8 figures.

Naturally, if everyone became a plumber, being a plumber would no longer be lucrative. But one thing is for certain, these lads are not on boards during the working day, complaining about "boomers" and posting obsessively about various "witches", from Donald Trump to Andrew Tate. Also as has been noted on this forum before, threads about health and social care IN IRELAND receive little traction and interest compared to the aforementioned witch burnings of named individuals or threads about US politics generally or US mass shootings etc.

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122038262#Comment_122038262

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pure car dependency that's responsible for less healthy old age, rather that having access to one's own car makes it easy - too easy - to look for and engage with people and opportunities well beyond the range of your own legs. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing (and I'm in no position to complain, seeing as I'm packing up right now for a 450km commute to one of my infrequent salaried stomping grounds); but when everyone does it, and does it all the time, that degrades the slow, steady trading of favours, skills, experience, calamities and other factors that contribute to building a good solid community.

It's that kind of unofficial support network that helps elderly people continue to live happily at home even in the back end of nowhere. Trees need to be cut and brought in for the fire; done. Front door needs a hole patched up and a lick of paint; done. Potatoes need to be planted/lifted; done. Grandchild is making their First Communion in an out-of-the way country church; no problem, lift is here. Different people of different ages helping in different ways, all with the common point of not having their lives planned to the minute with health-sapping mortgage-paying, pension-funding salaried employment.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037991#Comment_122037991

The cost of delivery of services to remote locations (doctors, home care, infrastructure, post offices, shops etc.) is a big tax burden on those living in urban areas. Even if that was overcome there is no doubting the significant climate impact. Just think of the fuel used to deliver those services.

No other country in the world allows dispersed living like in Ireland.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122039108#Comment_122039108

There's plenty of dispersed low density ribbon development in a lot of Europe. The CAP payment was a rural vote sop with France alone receiving half the budget in the 80s.

It's probably because we started out as an agrarian nation that there's an expectation that every middle sized town should have city level services, although many Irish towns now have a much better quality of life than the average for Dublin.

Sleepy

Any decent length drive on non-motorway roads in Ireland highlights the utter failure of our planning departments when it comes to rural areas: miles of low density McMansion ribbon developments between desolate towns and villages full of properties falling to ruin...

Who wouldn't love 300sqm homes on half an acre or more? I've no issue with those who understand that living rurally comes at the cost of not having much in the way of local services, increased waiting times for emergency services etc. But it is very hard to listen to the whinging you get on all forms of media from those who've made that choice and then bitch about not having a local hospital, having to drive their kids to school etc. while they're already being so heavily subsidised by urban and suburban dwellers living in much smaller homes.

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122039108#Comment_122039108

Ah here! No other country in the world allows dispersed living like in Ireland. Sounds like you haven't visited many other countries, or at least haven't stepped outside the comfort of a well-serviced urban area. The distances between "remote" locations in Ireland is tiny compared to other countries, and in other countries, there are people successfully and productively living in places that would make the back end of Cavan or Leitrim look positively crowded.

As for the "climate impact" argument: that ignores the fact that - if it's done in the traditional way - rural living has no more of a "climate impact" from transport than the actual practice in (Irish) cities. I find it shocking the amount of driving that my suburban Dublin family and friends do, every single day, and a slalom along any road in any estate shows that they're not the only ones. So many one-person short trips in a car ... The "country way" is to make every journey worth the cost, so both users and providers of local services work together to achieve an efficiency that I've rarely seen in any British or Irish urban context.

On the other hand, if you have people who want and try to live a suburban lifestyle in a big house in the back end of nowhere, well that's back to the "having it all" situation again, and that (IMO) is the bad attitude which the Irish-in-Ireland seem so proud to encourage.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122039997#Comment_122039997

Rubbish and nonsense.

https://www.askaboutireland.ie/enfo/irelands-environment/the-built-environment/pressures-on-the-environm-1/

"Single houses in the countryside have, for the most part, septic tank treatment systems for wastewater and this poses an increasing risk to groundwater and surface water quality. The provision of waste collection and other services are also much more expensive in dispersed communities.

Rural dwellers tend to have greater travel needs and much of this travel is done by private car. Increases in the volume of traffic causes air pollution and the loss of green space puts more pressure on the environment. "

One-off housing is the biggest curse in Ireland, and you don't see it in other countries, you don't even see it to the same extent in Northern Ireland.

BailMeOut

As noted so many times the OP was not labeling that generation, the OP was using then term 'boom' in a generic term to say there was a lot of births. When there is a spike in births it is always referred to as a boom. What the Madison Avenue folks call each generation has nothing to do with this.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122031687#Comment_122031687

It was an answer to your pointless question