Simmering anger

I think most of our problems lay with a government that doesn’t give a damn.

Population growing, why aren’t the government building new schools. Or better still, stop single sex schools and use all state schools for everyone.

Population growing, government close beds in hospitals and some A&E departments. Why aren’t they building more hospitals and to ensure we have staff in them - make all health/medical graduates work for 2 years in the system - and teachers and stop their 5 year career gap - all employees be treated the same, doesn’t matter if public servants or private.

No housing? Who’s not building? The government. Why aren’t they building houses. When we had no money in the 80’s we could build houses - housing should be back with county councils and anyone between the ages of 18 and 24 who is on social welfare should be made to work for the county councils, learn a trade and build houses.

We need aa change of government - neither FG or FF give a shite about you or me - if we made our TDs actually work for us and vote them out at the next election if they didn’t, then maybe they might actually do something for their big salaries, private health insurance and government cars with drivers.

I bought a house in 1998 in rural irish town on one salary for 45K punts.I lost it thru a bad marriage and will never get another mortgage and no chance of ever having a house.

Cut down on your internet and social media use and you will be mostly oblivious to all this apparant hate and lead a happier life.

On the way to A&E now as my GP can't see me and has recommended going and asking to speak with psychological services am not hopeful of being seen at all and really don't think being in a crowded setting will help with how I am feeling.

And the worst thing is AIB will just tear up any letter inviting them to explain themselves to any comittee. They cant be legally obliged to attend.

We do.....

However the population is also growing at a fast rate and thats a challenge, but we persist and the work always continues.

The MNC windfall may not continue indeed, but its a good thing then that the Government has NOT included such windfalls in annual budgeting, but placed it in discretionary funds and used it for special projects.

In any case, the success of this economy is not based on MNCs. All of the State money minders, the Govt, the Central Bank, the NTMA, the CSO, the ESRI and others, all use mGNI rather than GDP as a measure of growth and that strips out MNC skewing of growth.

Spoiler alert, our gross national income is still among the highest in the western world even without the MNCs, because we have a population fully employed, well educated, lean, efficient, productive, with good industrial relations and good salaries.

For those who want to see Ireland fail to justify their own negativity, I have bad news, it ain't happening any time soon.

Economists critical of how economic growth is measured (rte.ie)

International economists, including Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman, have criticised how Irish economic growth is measured.

Critics say Ireland’s GDP is distorted by the accounting manoeuvres of large US multinationals capitalising on low tax rates here.

In 2015, Apple moved intellectual property assets to its Irish base, thereby helping to drive Ireland’s GDP up 25%, which led to Paul Krugman calling it "leprechaun economics".

Yesterday he said Irish officials are "in denial".

Mr Setser is also critical of Irish fiscal measurements. "The basis issue is that Ireland is now the tax home of a very significant number of multinational companies. Many, particularly after some of the initial round of global tax reforms have located a lot of their international property in their Irish subsidiaries and this in effect inflates the measured size of the Irish economy."

He said Apple essentially reports all of its foreign operations as running through Ireland, which registers in Irish GDP data, "even though I don't think anyone in Ireland sits and sees Apple as a huge Irish company, as a huge Irish employer so there is a fundamental mismanagement of the true size of the Irish economy".

"The GNI* measure is actually a more helpful measure," Mr Setser said. "I applaud the Central Bank and the Central Statistics Office for developing this measure, but when Ireland submits it's data to the Eurostat repository when the Euro area compiles its GDP figures, they use GDP data."

"Ireland has to be conscious of the fact that people who are looking at international corporate tax avoidance are inevitably going to be looking at Ireland," he said.

I guess you have your own house and we trying to are all in wrong as tone of your post . You have litttle regards for others and are everything that’s wrong with this country . If people feel have March there s more than likely a reason but a person like you sits and judges as if he was judge and knows it all , I pity your view of country that is running the complete opposite to how you think it is .

I’d say you few friends mate silly stupid head in sand comment

I agree with both of you in some ways.

The administration burden in the public sector is nonsensical. The absence of any staff reduction when the Health Boards became the HSE demonstrates it clearly.

I am all for professionals in the PS being payed World leading salaries; Doctors, Nurses, Therapists, Carers, Engineers, Lawyers, Accountants, Economists, Architects, Police officers, Defence Forces personnel, Firefighters, Paramedics, Analysts, IT professionals, Cyber Security, Environmental Scientists, Researchers and Technicians in a hundred different disciplines etc etc.

They should all get paid their worth and be given every reason to stay in a long career serving their fellow citizens, but I refuse to accept that massive efficiencies in administrative and support staff services cannot be achieved, through standardisation and group service clusters as well as the rationalisation and professionalisation of the admin grades, for important work like procurement, project management, HR and change, pay and pensions, finance etc.

We have a right to expect better public services for the money we are spending and to expect those services to be standard over a 7 day week instead of 5 and for longer hours.

That will require a massive facing down of Union interests and I'm not sure any of the current parties have the stomach for that fight.

And I'm making the point that we're losing doctors, nurses, teachers and more young professionals to emigration because they can't survive on their current salaries and have zero hope of ever buying a property here at current rates. No point in building shiny new public sector facilities when we can't staff them.

Hmmm, don't know about that. Plenty of teachers, nurses, young professionals are building and buying houses here, they just don't appear in the news pages because their story doesn't fit the story. They have worked hard, saved hard and are reaping the reward.

A lot of those leaving are doing so for the adventure, for a chance to work in a different country, and fair play to them. The difference between now and 1980s is that the quality of life they are leaving is broadly on par with their chosen destination. No argument that Australia/NZ might have superior standard to Ireland in some respects, but these countries also rank in the top 5 globally. Ireland is top 10 anyway so differences are marginal.

The Australian, Canadian and NZ media are full of the same stories about housing crises, pressure on healthcare, cost of living issues. Our adventuring emigrants will face that in those countries too. I know two couples who have returned recently from Vancouver and Auckland and they say the picture is not as rosy as they believed it would be. Vancouver is boring as shyt too, apparently.

This is a bloody great country to live in, plenty to improve on but jaysis if you have your life in order there are great opportunities to avail of.

Blame Ardern not Ahern

The Sandinista socialist version of solving a housing crisis...can we look forward to this in Ireland?