Transport 21 - Rail, Luas & Road

I actually think some of these projects will actually happen although not in the 2015 timescale and perhaps not as part of one overall plan like T21. On the rail side I reckon Metro North, the Interconnector and some of the Luas extentions will limp on. On the road side I think M20 will be built. I'm not sure what ARC is? And some of the other roads will be built as money allows.

As for the idea that a government further down the line will come up with new plans, that might not be any bad thing. Lets say we manage to get back to some form of heavy infrastructure spending by 2020. It probably would be better for the government of that day to draw up plans based on the needs of the country in 2020 as opposed to dredging back up plans that would be 15-20 years old at that stage. The plans of T21 may not suit the country of ten years time.

Tax revenues are back at 2003/2004 levels. We were already building large scale infrastructural projects (port tunnel, motorways to everywhere) back then. The plans for the Interconnector were being made.

The problem isn't tax revenues as I see it...the problem is that spending on public "services" (do a myriad of stupid quangos count?) EXPLODED in the last few years, and it's much easier to give than to take away, but that's precisely what this government needs to do, to take it away and reduce expenditure on the public sector. The blunt force instrument of across the board paycuts has its place in this, but will only go so far. We need a more clinical, surgical approach to removing people who literally do little or nothing, or could be easily replaced by amalgamation of departments (do we really need a personnel or payroll dept. for EVERY county council?).

If we cut out the dead wood, amalgamate silly little county councils (Ireland is a very small, centrally funded country) into regional authorities and MAKE SUPERFLUOUS STAFF REDUNDANT then we can continue building the infrastructure we will need if we are ever to recover. The money is there for infrastructure, it is just that we are borrowing 20bn a year to pay wages for staff that could be made redundant. Look at the swift action being taken across the water by the Tories to eliminate quangos and simply make 300,000 public servants redundant. We need that approach here: a reduction in public servants != a reduction in public services (if handled properly).

There's not much can be done at the top end (high earners already pay most tax). The only thing that can be done, and it should be done, is to widen the tax net at the lower end and to introduce property taxes to stabilise the tax base somewhat.

Both measures will be politically unpopular but need to happen. They tried just increasing taxes based on current bands last year and taxes declined further, indicating that we reached the point of diminishing returns for taxpayers in the higher tax brackets.

BluntGuy wrote: »

I actually think tax revenues are a big part of it.

I think people need to accept they need to pay more tax.

Can't have something for nothing. You can argue it will drive away businesses, but the fact of the matter is, we've lowered tax (particularly corporation tax) to such a point that lowering it any further would just be utterly counter-productive.

Irish tax rates are still astonishingly low.
After the last irish tax hikes I compared it to what I am paying in germany and I'd still have 100s more in my pocket in Ireland compared to Germany.

50% of workers (not the population incl kids and aul wans etc - workers..) dont pay a cent of income tax.

Say the 1million workers paid 90 euro a month (which would hardly get you a night out in town)
But multiply it by the million people, thats about a grand a year each or a BILLION euros extra in total.

but somehow HALF the workers of Ireland are deemed exempt from contributing to the coffers of the state.

mad

I agree with the cut in public servants. Health Services, Revenue are all overstaffed on the admin side. People in Ireland just want everything. And Transport 21 and big-unrealistic projects like it pretend to deliver it.

People want a motorway to everywhere, a hospital capable of everything in their town, a revenue office, a town council, an arena, an airport, everything! Ireland only has 4 million people (approx!) The development should be based around the cities, not just Dublin which the government complain that they can't keep up with the growth yet they continually shove more people, businesses, motorways, transport into. No other country has such an all or nothing city as Dublin.
Cork is only merely cowering behind in the last few years, and Limerick, Galway and Waterford may aswell not exist except for a motorway to Dublin.

And the answer to road building is to not build it. For the size of the country, a decent public transport system would suffice for most of the other routes. Proper trains that deliver real time savings (theres nothing in front of them!) from Cork to Limerick, Limerick to Galway, across the midlands. Not trains that stop at 6pm and buses that stop at 8. Or that 3 train changes later through Dublin you can get to your destination. I think much more planning than money needs to come into this country. For transport, health, administration, etc.

It's important that infrastructure - road and rail - not come to a complete stop. We wouldn't shut down medical courses at universities for 5 years because it would lead to disastrous shortages of personnel and migration of medical academics to other jurisdictions. Similarly, we must retain a core of engineering talent in this country and ensure they continue to work on quality projects to retain their interest and justify paying them competitive salaries to what they might get in other jurisdictions. The world might be in "a state of chassis" but lots of stuff is still being built and quality talent is always being looked out for.

Accordingly, IE, RPA and NRA must be allowed to continue expanding their infrastructure outside of "state of good repair" but one project at a time, or in NRA's case maybe two.

If RPA pick Metro North then all LUAS lines and Metro West hits a stop line until MN design is complete at which time personnel can be migrated to design and planning of whichever project is deemed next in line. If IE picks Interconnector then Pace-Navan hits a stop line, Maynooth electrification would have to wait and much of the EMU order back-loaded for a similar period (probably entailing temporary dieselisation of the Bray line).

This will cause ructions since it goes against the spread the wealth/parity of esteem/social justice tide but the alternative is a full shutdown and we saw how long it took to recover from the 80s in the painful build up to the activity of the late 90s - kilometres of road built a year, not tens or hundreds and so on.

@westtip - the Spatial Strategy had a good deal of sense in how it was envisioned initially but it involved ignoring smaller towns in favour of reinforcing large centres and that was completely antithetical to how politics is done in Ireland.

It would be nice to think that government could be decentralised to the extent that major semistates and government departments could be relocated to the extent that a town of 5,000 people could have the HQ of Bus Eireann for instance - but it can't. The Sp.St. was too much too soon to please too many people (by which I mean government TDs and Senators). It should have started with an assessment of infrastructure and people available and where we were overcapacity (Dublin), and where we weren't.

Just because a town is small doesn't mean it's under capacity - if it was an under served train station and an empty motorway beside it and plenty of water and sewerage and power, not to mention an underemployed workforce or one that is largely commuting elsewhere - that makes it under capacity.

I think O'Cuiv's idea where town councils are essentially subsets of county councils is not the worst idea I've heard. Town councils should be outposts of county authorities but retain flexibility to reflect the difference between a commuter town and one with an employment base of its own etc. Local services are the ones which impact people most directly. Small county councils should be given permission to create shared services and given a portion of the savings to meet their currently unfunded needs. Leitrim could have the planning office and Roscommon could have the roads office for both counties or something similar. If cutting council numbers just looks like central government cutting its own costs rather than spending money better, it will be fiercely resisted and not completely without cause.