"Green" policies are destroying this country

Correct.

Answered in the should Ireland go nuclear thread in relation to SMRs RR's pricing and the UAE's Barakah nuclear power plant, where 4 reactors were built in 9 years.

I'm not sure the peak demand issue is much of an issue for heavily urbanised areas. There will never be a peak that comes close to everyone having personal ownership of a car. If one thing comes out of the pandemic it'll be more flexible working arrangements; the days of the overwhelming majority of us being expected to get into work in the same hour-long window and heading home in the same hour-long window are hopefully waning.

As for needing true AI to run autonomous cars? I'm not so sure about that. They might not be hitting the streets any time soon, but the things are being actively worked on with current tech. We massively overestimate how great we are at driving, we crash all the time, and in stupid situations even a current AI wouldn't get into. There's also the issue of the interaction between the more predictable autonomous vehicles and human drivers. The AI follows the rules where we don't, and that will be very apparent in the accident rates. Vehicle accidents are accepted as a necessary evil, but I see a point where having a licence, or the insurance, to manually drive a car will be a rarity. But it won't be in my lifetime.

As for humans leaving the solar system, whether we are ever capable of that is still in debate, whereas cars driving places by themselves is already happening in limited situations.

But if everyone lived in cities you still have to maintain rural lines for farming and it’s associated industries eg milking co ops, 3 phase repair shops etc

also if everyone lived in cities you would have a much higher density in said city which means more electricity demand in a smaller area which means larger underground cables which leads to higher capacitance issues which leads to higher cost anyway.

It’s kind of a non argument really.

Trades people will still be required. If there aren't as many required, then that would be an economic efficiency argument in favour of removing gas, but I don't think that there will be a reduction in the number of trades people required. They won't be working on gas boilers, except removing them, but there will still be heating systems required. People will still need hot and cold running water. I would suggest that there should be training provided (free to the tradesperson) to re-skill them for working with heat pumps or other electrical boilers, should other types become available and more desirable.

Part of making a just transition to a carbon-free economy is to support people through the changes that are being imposed on them. In this case, it means making sure that RGI plumbers are given the appropriate opportunities and skills to continue to work with the replacement technologies. It's like with the move to electric vehicles - there will be a smaller number of mechanics required for working on ICE vehicles, but there will be a larger number required for working on EVs.

I also don't think that it will happen or that it is desirable that it happen very quickly. I think that there needs to be a planned, phased approach to making this transition. As it currently stands, gas boilers are installed in very few new homes. Phase 1 is not installing them in any more new homes. Phase 2 is encouraging the replacement of end-of-life gas boilers with some sort of electrical heating. This phase will take quite a while. Most gas boilers last between 10 and 15 years, and it would not make sense to force replacements on people until their existing boiler has either ceased to function or has become extremely inefficient. There should be a low-cost loan/tax rebate available for the insulation/energy efficiency/heating system replacement works to encourage homeowners to upgrade the energy efficiency of their house when they are making these changes. I would suggest that this phase be completely finished by 2040. At this point there will be a relatively low number of houses with gas heating. They should just be given notice that the gas network is being shut off and that they have to sort out their heating.

You seem to be under the impression rural dwellers are somehow gaming the system to some massive personal benefit at the expense of poor city folk just scraping by and its ridiculous, rural people building a one off house pay all the planning contributions, taxes and bills the government and utility companies demand of them same as everyone else, you think any of those bodies are charities and wouldn't have increased those charges if they were losing money? You seem to think someone could get planning for a house on the top of a mountain and then the ESB and council have to put in 5km of new lines and new road to service that house for free, they do on their f#ck, you want want it you pay for it.

"The Department of Transport said it more than doubled State subventions to the main transport operators last year – to €670 million – “due to the profound impact that the Covid-19 crisis had on the sector”.

So even on a good year the the Irish taxpayer is subsiding public transport to the tune of over €300million, this is public transport that is already pretty pricey to people but what do rural taxpayers get for this? They have to pay for their cars and fuel which makes them net contributors to the exchequer, but they get crap roads and no public transport in return.

You're whole argument seems to be somehow rural dwellers are this massive drain on the economy but that is not reality, you realise they are planning on spending €10billion on the Dublin metro right? What % of Ireland's total population will actually have any use of that when 100% will be paying towards it?

Post offices are closing because people don't send letters anymore.

I think the point is to stop all the disingenuous complaining about the cost of electricity in Ireland and blaming wind power for our higher than average bills

Ireland has had higher than average electricity costs way before the first wind turbine was built.

You have it backward, people vastly underestimate how good we humans are at driving. The Norwegians manage one death per 600,000,000 km. That's out beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

There is an almost humorous articles in just the last day rumouring that the great god Apple has decided to go for fully autonomous in their EV project, with stupid nonsense like them trying to decide whether they would include a steering wheel to allow for human emergency intervention.

"Apple’s ideal car would have no steering wheel and pedals, and its interior would be designed around hands-off driving… Though the company is pushing to not have a standard steering wheel, Apple has discussed equipping the car with an emergency takeover mode"

Back in the real world, APPL up 2.85%. Will the author of that rumour please step forward and take a bow. Not exactly insider trading, but of the same ilk. The gullibility of seemingly the whole western world when it comes to hopeful whitterings on future tech simply amazes me. Disengagements per 1000 miles in 2020: Waymo, 0.033. Apple, who will release a fully autonomous vehicle in 4 years time which has no steering wheel - 6.95.

Remember that spoofing sack of faeces Musk, telling the world a Tesla would drive coast to coast in the US autonomoulsly, in 2017? Announced in 2016 and here we are at the end of 2021. To boost Tesla's share price so he could reap his massive mult-billion performance reward, he announced that by the end of 2020, Teslas bought at any time, would receive a full self-driving update, turning them into fully autonomous self driving taxis which would earn their owners $30,000 a year while their incredibly inteligent and financially savy owners slept or otherwise were not using their money printing machines.

People who worship technology simply astonish me. Unless it's ever proven otherwise, I maintain that general intelligence is required to drive a car safely and systems touted as AI (they aren't even close to the I bit) will not be able to achieve it.

One-off houses don't make a blind bit of difference to the cost of anything, All the services and roads are there already, if not you will pay dearly for them yourself.

A simple way of looking at it is, If you have a bus route from the city centre to the airport, it cost the same whether there are 20 people on that bus or 50 on it. That bus company has to pay the driver the same wages, fuel and maintenance cost the same regardless. So are you not better to have 50 on it rather 20.

So I cant see where the big costs of on-off houses come from. Say on a country road that you have 5 houses on it now, would you not be better off having an extra 10 houses on it using the bus example, no.

Fine by me, but you are the one that's deluded, not me.