Is Ireland prepared for Brexit?

Thargor wrote: »

We are headed for disaster and are squandering a once in a century opportunity, its absolutely mind-boggling how incompetent and corrupt our leaders are.

Do clarify and be specific. What exactly do expect the government to do?

mickoneill31 wrote: »

Leos talking about reducing taxes at the next budget. To me this is the old FF way of thinking. We need huge investments in infrastructure and housing. Not tax breaks. Investment will create jobs and make us more attractive for companies considering us because of Brexit.
Tax breaks will buy votes.

Agree wholeheartedly. We have to strike while the iron is hot here and boldly press ahead in a very public way with DART underground and Metro North (original plan which still has a valid railway order and could go out to tender on Monday) as well as designating Docklands and Heuston Gate as high rise districts of the city with minimum not maximum heights.

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

By building tens of thousands of good quality homes for sale, shared ownership, and long term rent. Then they can look at vanity projects.

What projects do you consider vanity? If you're referring to DU and MN these projects are essential projects for so many reasons

murphaph wrote: »

Vanity projects? That's why other cities build quality public transport too is it?

Enough homes to house all the people has to be the priority. Make the transport infrastructure we already have work cohesively and efficiently first before building more.

Zerbini Blewitt wrote: »

If we had 30 spare 50 storey office blocks and 20,000 spare apartments or houses in the €250k-€500k range, then maybe we could get a bigger slice of the upcoming opportunities than we already may (or are likely to) acquire.

Other than that, given the lessons from the bubble/crash, I think such provision will take a lot longer than 2 years (or in reality maybe 6 months from now for contingency planning).

Even Frankfurt hasn’t that much spare capacity at the moment.

So, I think we can get more business but it will likely happen in a longer, more do-able time frame.

All true, especially your 2 year point. How long have we been talking / planning Metro North?


We're reaching capacity now in Dublin (or seem to be), Brexit or no Brexit. Tax cuts are populist and will make a few people happy. Improving infrastructure increases quality of life (quicker commutes, better healthcare, places to actually live, better education etc.) but probably not during the lifetime of one government so we don't seem to do it well in Ireland. And a few years after a crash that nearly destroyed us we're going back to populist policies.

If a company is moving to Ireland, they don't just look at the infrastructure now. They'll have a section to analyse the future capacity. If you're moving 500 jobs you might be planning 1000 over 10 years so while our infrastructure might be creaking now you might make allowances if there's a plan. We don't have a plan.

I worked with one company last year that was considering Ireland vs Germany to decide which office was to take up the slack from the UK after Brexit. They've a presence in Ireland & Germany now.
Germany won. There were various reasons but capability to handle their expansion plans was one. It's obviously not the only criteria.
I'm not suggesting that capacity be increased just for Brexit. I live and work in Dublin. I can see the way it's going. We need somebody with a plan a bit smarter than "cut income tax".

It's not just the March 2019 deadline that we should be looking at either. New companies open up in Europe all of the time. They'll continue to do so after Brexit, just now the UK has made itself a lot less attractive so where Ireland might have been second in line for some companies it might be number one in the future.

The economy is booming, we don't need the government to inflate things further.

It will be much cheaper to build all the stuff ye want like Metros, motorways and houses in the next recession, when we really will need government spending to goose the economy.