State lost 10,000 Intel jobs due to planning system delays

Are you suggesting that Irish citizen rights should be curtailed in order to facilitate US multinationals?

We're they also going to build housing for the 10,000 employees in Oranmore?

We have a robust planning system which operates the same for everyone.

That article reads like its lobbyist sponsored.

Gone are the days of Charlie, FF and cuddling up to FDI.

Absolutely. We constructed these 'rights', they were hardly given to us with the Ten Commandments.

All they have done is enrich the legal profession and stymied progress.

Get rid of them.

Not really, OP. Oranmore was thrown in as an attractive second Irish option - but only in the "also running" category.

Realistically, investment by the EU was targeted to significantly reduce Europe's semiconductor dependence from external and possibly non-friendly states. Having all of Intel's FAB capacity on a small island which is now physically further isolated from Europe following Brexit, would have been the embodiment of small-mindedness and would have been a significant political loss within the original member states of France, Germany and the Netherlands, etc. Eggs and baskets.

Don't forget that many of the populace in Europe already confuse Ireland and the UK (common language and histories, eh!) and foresee an Eirexit as an eventuality ('the islands may as well...').

There are no homes

It's not just the planning either...EPA are taking years to issue licences. It's only a matter of time before a big investment is also lost because of this.

has our property problems also played a part in this?

That's a good question, but I'd say our property problems are in part to blame on planning also. The issue with property is there is a lack of supply. If we wanted we could supply a lot of houses on Oranmore where there are greenfield oppertunitites than you can in Dublin City centre, where the issue is different. Also the Intel jobs would not have required the govt to foot the bill for the houses, as those employees are generally paid well and can afford their own. It's not like the lads in facebook dublin are struggling for accommodation.

The Irish state on behalf of Intel has previously tried to illegally circumvent planning and development laws. Through the IDA the Irish government overstepped it's remit on CPO's. You can be sure every time a development by Intel is purposed it'll rightly be examined to the nth degree.

I wouldn't be giving up our rights to object and bring legal recourse. People talk about giving priority to the benefit to society over the individual. Thats all fine and we'll until you are the individual and the "society" being talked about isn't your neighbors , your friends our community. Your community will actually be displaced by rising costs , the "society" spoken about is actually the general economy.

I would however fully agree that the legal system for planning (and indeed several other things) is extremely slow. It probably needs reform to deal with such complex planning projects.

But in my personal opinion we are very over reliant on such projects and other services such as local housing, schools and transportation links are often in a worse position when theses are completed.

I think this moreso than any issues with planning etc is the reason that Galway was not selected.

It was only ever a outside option if everything else went wrong.

Europe needs more chip manufacturing capacity and why not put that capacity in the middle of the continent where it has easy physical connectivity to the customers.

Not in the far corner of the continent that has had it's access to the rest of the continent curtailed by Brexit because the land bridge is no longer as feasible an option as it used to be.

It's cumbersome and far to controlling and prescriptive. It seems tailor made for those wanting to keep Ireland in stasis and to prevent change and progress. It also allows for ridiculous powers to be vested in councils that are likely illegal in the context of an EU member state - such as the discriminatory local needs nonsense which Irish people should frankly be embarrassed about.

The planning legislation is so restrictive and so overpowered, that the government itself can't get policies they consider of national importance implemented so they have had to draft legislation to override nimby people and councils who love to dictate to property owners their tastes and priorities. Councils were preventing homeowners from putting up solar panels, or restricting them to limited sizes so the government had to override the planning legislation and councils. What they should have done is re-write the planning legislation and re-jig the whole process to reduce the scope of powers it affords to councils and nimbys, which are simply over the top. It should also have exclusions for the government where matters of national importance are concerned, such as building hospitals and other vital infrastructure.

The Norwegian company Equinor - experts in offshore wind farms - only recently pulled out of a major project in conjunction with the ESB:

"But Equinor has pulled out of the project, and out of Ireland. According to the Irish Examiner, Equinor has abandoned wind plans in Ireland due to “dissatisfaction with the regulatory and planning regime.”  https://electrek.co/2021/11/05/equinor-pulls-out-of-ireland-and-a-2-3b-floating-offshore-wind-farm/

A system that lets some lone chancer down in Wexford, who has a large parcel of land, object to a corporation like Apple building a data centre near Athenry, in the hope of getting the project cancelled and then selling them his land to them at an inflated valuation, is just so risible, where does one start?

These type of deals are very rare and getting one leads to others. This is a massive blow to the digital economy and more importantly loss of skilled manufacturing jobs for those who don't want office work. We need a independent planning office for national projects over a certain size. No point pretending we are good in this area. Not the first one we lost over planning issues.