John Collison on why Ireland can't do infrastructure

Seems timely that Sinead O'Sullivan has a new piece, this time on why Ireland can't fix anything:

https://www.butthistime.com/p/kaleidoscopes

This is a good summary of the piece:

…'And what (Micheal) Martin did in thirty seconds is what the Irish state has been doing for forty years: using the genuine complexity of interconnected problems as a shield against acting on any of them.'

Not a surprise, as France basically invented modern light-rail transit, and Wikipedia says there are currently 26 urban tram systems across the country. Seventeen out of of the twenty largest cities in France (i.e., cities with a population over 150,000) have tram services, which is pretty impressive.

Rennes, at 230,000 people, is the biggest city without a tram, but it has the unique rubber-wheeled automatic Rennes Metro instead, which leaves Toulon (180,000) as the biggest city without any rail mass-transport. In the same part of France, but at the other end of the scale, Aubange (just east of Marseille), at 48,000 inhabitants, is the smallest place with one - but even the French consider that an abnormally small place to support a tram-line, and an extension of the line into Marseille itself is planned.

You might have missed this thing called MetroLink… MetroLink to Partner with daa and Transport Agencies to Deliver Key Airport Works - MetroLinkWeb

So, how many millions spent years ago and just now the contract's being tendered? Glad to finally see some progress, only took what, 4 years for the Macroom bypass, a much simpler project.

Her analysis in "Kaleidoscopes" of the double-talk coming out of the government is spot on. Her points in the earlier articles about the prevalence of copium in Irish thinking are as well. We let the government get away with way too much as long as the checks keep coming in, so they keep the checks coming in. Should that FDI money go poof, the country will be in very bad straits. With large annual budget surpluses we should have had, already, light rail to Dublin and a medical system at least in the top 10 in Europe, but we're 12th worse behind Belarus but not as highly ranked as, say, Iran (which is near the bottom but not as far as Ireland):

(https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-countries-with-the-best-and-worst-health-care-in-2026/)

which in turn links to this:

(https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp)

Pretty sad to be behind Iran in health care.

I think this is telling from the visualcapitalist data:

'

One of the clearest patterns in the rankings is that the world’s best healthcare systems are not necessarily the most expensive. Top-performing countries tend to prioritize broad access, preventative care, and efficiency over sheer spending.

'

Ireland is third highest cost per capita in Europe Does it have the 3rd best outcomes in Europe?

Your link to 'ceoworld' shows 5 of the top 10 countries in Europe. Not Ireland, though. Just as much reliance on published data and surveys as visualcapitalist does, too. So, is your argument if it supports my point, the data are fine, otherwise garbage?