John Collison on why Ireland can't do infrastructure

Field east

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123945280#Comment_123945280

if ever there was a classical example of shooting the messenger and not the message then this is it. One may agree with all of it , some of it or none of it BUT it is well structured, well argued and it is worthy of discussion By ANYONE who wants to review if we can IMPROVE how we ‘do things ‘ in Ireland

magicbastarder

I have on occasion argued that planning permission should not be allowed survive a sale of property. There's a site near cross guns - daneswood? - which first went on the market in 2012. It still has not been fully developed, and I was told (citation required!) that it's changed hands several times in the intervening period. If so, someone profited handsomely by simply sitting on the site and letting it appreciate, without having to lift a finger.

For large developments like that, the time limit on PP should be much shorter - a year or two, say, and should expire as soon as the site is sold. It might mean whatever is applied for is more likely to actually get built.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947901#Comment_123947901

There are positives and negatives to this. Yes, it makes speculation less profitable, but against that, it reinforces our current stupid system where builders have to become developers, and it will delay development of sites.

In other countries, a “developer” is someone who takes a site, obtains planning, gets services in place, and then sells it to a builder for a profit. The builder then builds houses on the site and sells those for profit. Overall, the total profit is the same, but it (and the risk) is shared between two entities. Here, the same person/company generally takes on all of the chain, which slows down the process: if you don’t have funding to build the final houses, then the land has to just sit there, undeveloped, because you don’t want your planning to lapse while you’re trying to get money for the building stage.

This is another way the system pushes landowners toward holding assets rather than developing and selling them, because until you are confident of covering the whole cost of "field-to-houses" you can’t begin.

If you cancel planning whenever a property changes hands, you would slow the supply, as each new owner needs to re-apply for planning. Ultimately, I can’t help thinking that if this were the law, we’d end up with a rubber-stamp process to “transfer” planning permission, which would just introduce another delay.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947793#Comment_123947793

We are poor at it. We could be worse, and we do mostly eventually get things done, but it is a slow, laborious process and there is absolutely no indication that we are any better at building infra than we are at allowing for the building of housing. If we were actually good at infra we would have no downtime where we are not building anything significant given our finances. Instead we frequently go through completely wasted years.

The market is trying to build far more housing than we are allowing it to build. This is simply a fact. Much like with the corruption trials, we have learned the completely wrong lessons from the crash. There were huge issues with the type of housing that was being delivered in that asset bubble. Yet large brownsite infill is still extraordinarily difficult to push through and consistently nerfed in scale even when it comports to local development plans. This idea that developers are slow playing construction to inflate prices is not backed up by anything. Globally anywhere with permissive planning has equivalently more construction and more stable pricing.

People want to push for punitive taxation on unused lots I am absolutely fine with that. It is a good idea. But it is pissing about the edges of the problem - land speculation is annoying but not the root cause. Collison is right, we have too inefficient a structure and too haphazard and bureaucratic a process. This makes pipelines unpredictable and stifles investment in resources. It means even when decisions are made at the highest level it doesn't translate to anything on the ground and such a chaotic system is never going to be efficient.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947781#Comment_123947781

Yes, I agree. I just don't believe it is anything close to the core problem.

As regards RZLT - one of the solutions to its haphazard implementation is to give far more tax raising powers and responsibilities to local govt. Basically make them control their own finances and own these decisions. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947901#Comment_123947901

weird aside on this - there's only one set of imagery on google street view (from Nov 2022) along the road where the development mentioned is, and i'm fairly certain there used to be more. an adjoining road has 14 sets of dates!

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123947901#Comment_123947901

If they have planning permission for that site it will have expired or been extended multiple times at this point though?

magicbastarder

i assume so - they certainly have changed the plans several times (i know this because of the annoyance of people who had already bought there - who had bought thinking that opposite them would be two or three storey structures, but plans were changed to apartment blocks instead)

this was the site as of a few months ago; if you change position onto the road it's on, botanic road, it drops back to nov 22;

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3672616,-6.271098,3a,75y,96.34h,72.7t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1slX0BIqQTTxGzwOgqvwS7GA!2e0!5s20250401T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D17.297660091449345%26panoid%3DlX0BIqQTTxGzwOgqvwS7GA%26yaw%3D96.34114711367968!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAyNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

long story short though, it's been 13 years since the site was first on the market for development, and less than half the site has been completed.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123946338#Comment_123946338

There’s no shortage of voices in the IT and media as a whole for minorities and those of a lower socio economic status. The reaction is simply another lazy reflex of people far too consumed in American politics. Wealthy people shouldn’t be automatically listened to but they shouldn’t be ignored either. The idea that people who make decisions daily on allocating capital and who have built massive businesses shouldn’t put forward their views in a democracy is ridiculous.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123946463#Comment_123946463

This is more conspiratorial BS.

Politicians are not smart enough to operate like this. And if they were, it has completely failed. Housing is the key issue in many western countries and has shifted elections. In Ireland the two main parties have lost half their vote share in a decade and a half with housing a primary contributor.

Rising house prices was good for politicians when access to housing was easy in the 2000s (see ex Australian PM John Howard statement on nobody ever complaining about them).

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123946358#Comment_123946358

The Midland railway built the line from Broadstone to Galway in 5 years at the end of the famine.

And as for house prices a big drop brought us problems before and tends to occur only in a crisis.However, salaries have increased by one third since 2016, if house prices had been kept fairly constant or had a modest increase then affordability would not have been such an issue now.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948250#Comment_123948250

Where did I say “politicians”?

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948346#Comment_123948346

”Those with control of the solution”

You then describe land use subsequently.

Are you really claiming politicians don’t have the biggest impact on this?

Land hoarding by owners is absolutely a factor but to claim they control the situation is a nonsense. Those with the most influence to impact land use are politicians still.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948318#Comment_123948318

Whisper it softly (because you’ll be screamed at by many people) but house prices are not the biggest issue. House prices only went by Celtic Tiger levels 18 months ago, but real incomes are higher (median salary data from the Tiger period is hard to get but if you do sectoral analysis you can see pay scales are higher for more stable sectors). An example is a teacher, they started at just over €31k in 2007. Now it’s €42k. What’s ironic is though that they have less access to housing now though, as mortgage rules remain relatively strict.

The facts are that the Government gave the Central Bank more powers over lending and they were mandated to stop prices spiralling and for there to be a bubble. The CBI gave themselves a pat on the back for this as they were fairly effective at moderating growth simply by stunting demand with their 20% deposit/3.5x limits. We’ve seen with subsequent relaxation rules how much pent up demand there is.

The issue has been rental prices and available of different typologies of homes. 10 years of non building and rampant rental inflation here put the foot down on the throat of a generation whose employment prospects was killed by the GFC. There’s a lot of faux concern for the generation of kids going to Australia now but the stats show this really is only a minor issue, that generation (Gen Zish) aren’t in a great position housing wise but they still are in a far better position than the generation that came before them (the Millenial).

Varadkar was correct that a collapse in prices would kill the construction industry again. People interpreting that as wanting massive price growth are being disingenuous or just don’t get it.

On planning and the building of stuff & it taking less time, I’d love to see someone do a deep dive on what happened in the 19th Century. You can get details on how the Westminister Acts and debates led to the railways we see today, with “NIMBYism” and bespoke solutions even a feature then (still visible today with locations of certain pedestrian bridges).

riddlinrussell

I would also say that crowing about how quickly the railways were built in the Victorian era is quite funny when a big part of our car dominant planning is due to how slow said railways are because with a few notable exceptions they were a mix of:

• Thrown up on bogs
• Meandering
• Single Track with no forethought of ever being double track (or more in cities)

All of which we are slowly and painfully remediating now (but probably should have been doing when we were instead ripping them up in the 50s/60s)

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948656#Comment_123948656

I said nothing about land use in that post either. Once again, I find myself as a bystander in an argument between you and something you imagine I said.

Your final paragraph is the first time you engaged with something that I actually wrote. You could have started with that l rather than immediately calling me a conspiracy theorist based on something I never claimed.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948762#Comment_123948762

These railways were built by what today we would call Venture Capitalists, and they show the same short-sighted dash to gain dominance in a new space without considering the long term requirements. It was more important to be first than to be good. The modern tech industry works the same way, and really it only looks successful because the hundreds of failed online service business that precede every success don't leave swathes of visible derelict infrastructure behind them: server instances just get silently wiped and reprovisioned... something that's hard to do with a railway or an electric transmission line.

That need to get it right first time us why things move slowly in physical infrastructure: live patches after shipping are fine for websites, but in physical engineering there are actual consequences for failure in service, and they often get measured in lives.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948814#Comment_123948814

You need to learn how to craft an argument.

You began by saying the “those that control the solution”.

You then followed this up with;

” a system that rewards holding land rather than using it, especially as we've also got an electorate that will not tolerate a drop in house prices, so we've got politicians of every hue trying to resolve a supply shortage while maintaining high prices..”

You then claimed you weren’t talking about politicians.

What are you talking about?

I’m not the only one to have called you out, so perhaps reflect yourself.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123948762#Comment_123948762

The Midland line from Mullingar to Athlone was double track and we abandoned it and other sections were singled after Victorian times. Railways went over bogs because bogs were on the route. The approaches to the cities could have been widened instead of allowing a load of houses be built there, that is not the Victorians' fault.

goingnowhere

Most of the railways built as single were built with scope for 2 tracks, bridges were built to allow two tracks, even the Foynes line is like that

Bray Greystones was built for 2 tracks originally, all the original tunnels built for 2

Limerick Limerick Junc, Maynooth-Mullingar-Athlone-Ballinasloe and Mullingar-Longford, Kildare-Carlow all had two tracks but were singled.

Lot of scope to get second track instated with fairly minimal cost

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123949006#Comment_123949006

And here we go again...ignore that the second quote is in response to a different point made by someone else…

Do me a favour and block my posts. Thanks.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123949130#Comment_123949130

So actually articulate your point.

You made a very specific post on people who can “control the solution”.

Who are they? What was your actual point? Again I am not the only person here who picked you up on this so enough of the deflecting.

burgerKev

If he's friends with Elon Musk could he get some of his Boring machines over here to build us a metro?

https://www.boringcompany.com/prufrock

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123949159#Comment_123949159

You're the only one who didn't engage and went straight to insulting me. I don't owe you a discussion on those terms.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123949267#Comment_123949267

Sorry I have engaged, you still haven’t made a point based on what you said.

Who “control the solution”?

Kermit.de.frog

What's most frustrating about the bureaucratic planning and judicial frankenstein the state now has is that we will never have more surplus money than we have now, ever again.

There should be shovels in the ground all over the country.

A massive opportunity to transform this country for the better is being thrown away.

Strumms

Right, more surplus money, meanwhile.. organisations like concern, dochas, trocaire all on public record recently..lambasting us for not significantly increasing the amount of our cash in international aid we send out of this country each year. 👀🤦🏻‍♂️

Like a middle class couple winning the lottery, only to be told they should give it all away and live off their €60,000 savings..

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123950335#Comment_123950335

No, if you use the real proportions, it’s more like your couple winning the lottery then being asked to give a few grand to the local Vincent de Paul. A sum that won’t be missed, but makes a difference to the people getting it. Overseas aid is less than 1% of our total budget spending. If you want to know what actually costs us money, it’s all broken down here: Where Your Money Goes (Foreign Development Aid is under “Additional Departments” then “Foreign Affairs and Trade”).

If you want to take a particularly selfish view of things, then maybe consider that overseas aid spending reduces migration pressure from poorer countries, which will reduces the number of “brown” people coming here. Either way, it’s got nothing to do with Infrastructure spending, because Aid is not a capital expenditure, and last I checked we talk about Infrastructure here.

Idbatterim

An old German colleague I worked with, reckoned they would purposefully build everything under capacity here. As there's far more money in doing things several times, than right the first time…

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123950587#Comment_123950587

maybe, but its probably more to do with the short term nature of our political system and cycles

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123950319#Comment_123950319

This is where I disagree with Collison. Stuff is going on. We are spending more on infrastructure than our peers. Sure some of this is inflation, but it’s not like nothing is going on. The National Broadband Plan, Education, Housing and Health have got a lot of capex in recent years.

There are specific issues in my view though around processes that lead to this inflation and not pushing forward the most strategic projects. It’s a bit easier to push forward loads of primary care centres than Metro Link of course, but we need both.