Irish economy exceeding capacity to provide infrastructure , time to slow down?

My opinion is that we're stuck in a 1980s mindset. This was the period when people like Micheal Martin formed their views, and I don't think they've changed much since.

Then, the key objective was wage moderation and employment growth. Better to have employment growth than a small number of people on high wages. You still see concern about wage growth in places like the Central Bank, where a report a few years ago saw immigration as a way of moderating wages.

The problem with this is that it is not running the economy for the good of the people, but rather for a certain stratum that benefits from relatively low wages for the majority. In the 1980s, wage moderation made sense as a temporary measure until full employment is reached, but it has now become embedded in the economic thinking of policymakers.

Billions a year being wasted in construction inflation, because they didn't and won't build infrastructure. It's a total disgrace....

Before we'd have ff or fg in government, seeing as those days are over. Their both going to be in bed together, it should actually make it far easier to make the " hard decisions ".… like building the metro etc, they'll both sanction it and highly likely both will be in government IF and its a big if, it ever gets built...

My thoughts exactly. Our economy needs another round of EU funding. We do not do infastructure, we do not do planning.

OP you said the Amazon project went selsewhere? where did it go, I heard just not for Dublin area

Nobody will be giving Ireland any funding given we are one of the only countries in the world running budget surpluses. We don't need funding. The money is there. We need decisions made faster and we need to fix our broken planning system.

yup, we re pretty much bog standard in all these terms, no we dont pay excessively high taxes, taxes also need to rise in order for us to try resolve all of our issues, they wont though, as we ve convinced ourselves that thats a bad thing, so again, on we go!

again, more libertarian horsesh1t! the main tolls used by such ideologies, always blame state 'interference', always! markets are always efficient therefore perfect, no they are not! markets are simply inefficient, and filled with all sorts of wealth extractive entities, i.e. rent seeking. yes markets are powerful, and can be far better than state entities in providing some of our needs, but not all! another tool, de-fund the states ability to be able to adequately provide whats required, in turn, encourage market based approaches, eg. housing, again, results in severally dysfunctional outcomes, including hyper inflated prices, i.e. more rent seeking! rinse repeat

but dont worry, again, nothing is gonna change here, as we re gonna keep electing the same governments over and over, which have these beliefs embedded in their own ideologies, rinse repeat!

free market libertarians are simply zealots, they will never accept accountability, never!

How is the State's performance in delivery of Health, Water, Electricity, Transport, Planning, etc?

I want you to come on here and justify your crap and show us how the state is adequately delivering on the topics above because from where everyone else is standing, that’s just not the case.

Rather than your usual verbal diarrhea, how about you try persuading us in concrete terms how the State is remotely competent, because outside your echo chamber it is failing to deliver; before calling for more state intervention in Housing.

and the disturbing thing is, most people actually think this current form of capatalism is the only one that actually exists, and has ever! there are actually infinite forms of captalism available to us, but at some stage we must be adults and accept theres something fundamentally wrong with this current, most predominate form, that its actually only truly capable for many of our short term needs, but truly awful, even dangerous, for our long term needs.

no i dont advocate to return to the outright depressing ireland of the past, but again, at some point, we need to become adults and accept, we re in deep sh1t in regards many, if not most of our critical long term needs, and this form of capitalism simply isnt capable of doing so!

we clearly need a balance of long term state investments and market based capitalism, in order to maintain most of our short term needs, although an extremely difficult task in itself, again, at some stage, adult thinking needs to eventually happen, or its clearly obvious, the whole thing will completely fall apart if left be

so where is your evidence for this, 'not bad'? for example, how does our environmental future look like at the moment? how does our housing future look like? are more and more gaining access to critical health care or is it in decline?

exactly! this is exactly what modern political and economic ideologies are about, undermining the states ability to be effective, and empowering more market based entities in providing critical social needs, hows that actually going right now?