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Decentralisation - How great is the need?

Montroseee

I've lived in Wicklow Town for the vast majority of my youth and never has it had such a ghost town/depressing appearance as today. Boarded up units, vacant shops, large dole queues and just generally run down. Arklow is similar if not worse and I've plenty of friends in Athlone who are complaining of the same phenomenon.

These are not small little shanty towns with a population of 200, these are large towns with catchment areas of tens of thousands and it is such a shame to see them slowly disintegrate. Even small towns in the greater Dublin Area such as Bray are beginning to show similar signs.

I always make the effort to shop local and buy as much as I can from retailers within the area but there is little else I can do as a citizen. This is partially why rents and prices are so high at the minute in Dublin, a huge portion of the people I know want to relocate to Dublin for the opportunities available there. It's a far cry from the vacant shop windows and kip these towns are turning into.

Government intervention is clearly required here, although I'm sure exactly what. Most foreign investment goes to either of the three big cities but I think it's imperative for the long term survival of these towns that there is some incentives given to locate there. There is little future for local entrepreneurship in the town and it's just such a shame to see these towns dying a slow death. What do the good folk of AH think could be done?

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Sleepy

listermint wrote: »

Is there not something to be said for Wicklow County Council . 'Local housing for locals only' Policy. Which is frankly Illegal under EU law.

This local needs crap that prevents anyone without a ridiculously strong connection to the area (wicklow) building within the counties borders.

Some superb policies there for bringing in new life into the county right there.

Got to give them a good clap on the back for trying to keep those foreign dubs out of their borders :rolleyes:

Reep what you sow!

Are you really suggesting that what rural counties need is more one-off housing? :rolleyes:

They shouldn't be granting residential planning permission for anything other than properly serviced housing estates within or close to existing town boundaries.

snickerpuss

People were probably reluctant to be decentralised as while they might now have a job in a town in the middle of nowhere, how were their partner or children ever going to find jobs there? Commuting to Dublin City Centre from Ballinasloe or wherever probably wasn't a goer for one half of the family.

Quin_Dub

snickerpuss wrote: »

People were probably reluctant to be decentralised as while they might now have a job in a town in the middle of nowhere, how were their partner or children ever going to find jobs there? Commuting to Dublin City Centre from Ballinasloe or wherever probably wasn't a goer for one half of the family.

I guess the point is that the government were unwilling to force the change.. The majority of these positions were not highly skilled roles (I'm sure there were a few, but most were basic admin roles) so it's not like they couldn't have been replaced in very short order with people willing to be in the new locations.

Were a private sector company to relocate a facility staff are given a fairly simple choice - Move or leave , that is the choice that these guys should have been given..

As the previous poster said it should have worked and delivered savings to government costs and provided a benefit to the local economies...but government weakness allied to union strength killed it.

listermint

Sleepy wrote: »

Are you really suggesting that what rural counties need is more one-off housing? :rolleyes:

They shouldn't be granting residential planning permission for anything other than properly serviced housing estates within or close to existing town boundaries.

One off housing is bad, why ?

Explain why having new familys moving and building homes that have not lived there previously is a bad thing? Im interested.

Im not talking about holiday homes here btw with your rolls eyes assertion.

Primary residential homes.

The Ban in place in wicklow and similar counties is illegal.

Sleepy

Leaving aside the visual aspect of them ruining so much of our countryside:

One off housing is too expensive for the government to provide services to an leads to the endless whinging we see on here about poor access to healthcare / education etc, lack of broadband / public transport etc.

Unless you're prepared to live fully "off the grid" and comply with such regulations as the septic tank registration/inspections etc. and / or pay the full financial cost of your connection to the electricity / water / sewerage / telecommunications networks while accepting that you'll have to travel long distances to avail of public services such as education, healthcare, policing etc. you're effectively asking those of use who live in areas with the critical mass to make such things economically viable to subsidize your "large house in the country" lifestyle.

listermint

Sleepy wrote: »

Leaving aside the visual aspect of them ruining so much of our countryside:

One off housing is too expensive for the government to provide services to an leads to the endless whinging we see on here about poor access to healthcare / education etc, lack of broadband / public transport etc.

Unless you're prepared to live fully "off the grid" and comply with such regulations as the septic tank registration/inspections etc. and / or pay the full financial cost of your connection to the electricity / water / sewerage / telecommunications networks while accepting that you'll have to travel long distances to avail of public services such as education, healthcare, policing etc. you're effectively asking those of use who live in areas with the critical mass to make such things economically viable to subsidize your "large house in the country" lifestyle.

Planning laws do not allow for this.

At all.

Why is this form of housing allowed in various other countries in Europe that have greater distances to travel to your so called services.

Ireland is not densely populated the whole blite on countryside arguement is used by folks that dont want neighbours to their already solitary homes in the middle of nowhere.

Planning in Wicklow is still Illegal discriminatory and also behind the times.

And we have a thread started on the very subject as to why there is no people to spend their cash locally.

And your assertion that countryside living is for large houses and rich people is actually hilarious, I pity your outlook.

And if people think ireland is big in terms of travel, try working outside any city in the states

Ridiculous........

Sleepy

You're right. Our planning laws don't allow for it and, tbh, in my opinion that's a good thing.

A lot of our problems actually *STEM* from us not being densely populated. And building more one-off houses will make those problems worse.

Countryside living is for people who can reasonably conduct their professions in the countryside i.e. farmers. In order to maintain security of food supply, society is happy to subsidize their lifestyles to an extent. It can't afford to allow every Tom, Dick and Mary who want to have a nice big house with no neighbours live out in the sticks because by doing so, it creates a responsibility which society can't afford to fulfill to provide them with emergency services etc. Nowhere did I say you need to be rich to live in the countryside, in fact, it's quite the opposite in my experience: most of the ostentatious McMansions built during the past decade cost their owners less than smaller family homes in the suburbs thanks to Daddy giving the kids a bit of the farm , bunging the local gombeen county counselor a few grand in a brown envelope to re-designate the land and paying "mates rates" in the black economy.

Ray Palmer

Sleepy wrote: »

The decentralization of government depts to more rural locations was actually a good idea in principle imo.

Huge numbers of public service jobs amount to little more than basic administration. Despite what the unions would have you believe, these "low paid" paper pushers actually represent the most over-paid members of the public service (while many of their higher skilled colleagues earn lower base salaries than their private sector counterparts, the lower level admin staff earn significantly more than their counterparts in the private sector).

Locating these positions in rural locations where property prices are lower should have made a lot of sense: 25k a year in Dublin won't buy you a house but it might well do so in a more rural location. It should have both helped slow rural depopulation, provided good jobs outside of the capital and helped keep the costs of public administration down.

Of course, the unions got greedy and the government didn't have the balls to simply make redundant staff who weren't prepared to re-locate redundant and re-hire in the new location so the whole thing fell apart.

There is so much half knowledge on this that it falls apart once you actually use the facts.
Firstly the government announced this idea without any consultation of its workers and the unions that represent them.
Having worked in both private and public sectors I can say many public "paper pushers" are paid lower than their equivalent in the private sector and do more than admin that you have in the private sector.
If the government decided to make people redundant and then hire locally they would have had to pay out a lot of redundancies. Money which they don't have to keep unlike private companies. In other words redundancies don't cost private companies any money as they already have the money waiting and have to pay into that fun anyway.
Then you have the massive personal turmoil to the staff who worked for the government for a many years and decades getting a slap to the face of being let go.
The idea that they thought they could just tell people to move away from their families and friends was patently never going to happen.
The government decide to try this without out full cost benefit analysis. They still can't say how much it did save or more to the point how much it cost for all the failures to decentralise.
It wasn't about unions getting greedy it was about an ill conceived costly project that was proposed in public as fact without any agreement from the workers.

markpb

I think it's funny how the solution to the problem of 'not enough jobs in x town/village' is always to take them from Dublin, not to create them of their own accord.

Freddie Dodge

Sleepy wrote: »

The decentralization of government depts to more rural locations was actually a good idea in principle imo.

Huge numbers of public service jobs amount to little more than basic administration. Despite what the unions would have you believe, these "low paid" paper pushers actually represent the most over-paid members of the public service (while many of their higher skilled colleagues earn lower base salaries than their private sector counterparts, the lower level admin staff earn significantly more than their counterparts in the private sector).

Locating these positions in rural locations where property prices are lower should have made a lot of sense: 25k a year in Dublin won't buy you a house but it might well do so in a more rural location. It should have both helped slow rural depopulation, provided good jobs outside of the capital and helped keep the costs of public administration down.

Of course, the unions got greedy and the government didn't have the balls to simply make redundant staff who weren't prepared to re-locate redundant and re-hire in the new location so the whole thing fell apart.

Ok Charlie, I was with you to this point↑↑↑↑

Then you came out with this ↓↓↓↓ which is frankly the biggest load of unadulterated crap I've read in a long while.

Sleepy wrote: »

Leaving aside the visual aspect of them ruining so much of our countryside:

One off housing is too expensive for the government to provide services to an leads to the endless whinging we see on here about poor access to healthcare / education etc, lack of broadband / public transport etc.

Unless you're prepared to live fully "off the grid" and comply with such regulations as the septic tank registration/inspections etc. and / or pay the full financial cost of your connection to the electricity / water / sewerage / telecommunications networks while accepting that you'll have to travel long distances to avail of public services such as education, healthcare, policing etc. you're effectively asking those of use who live in areas with the critical mass to make such things economically viable to subsidize your "large house in the country" lifestyle.

Irish people have lived scattered throughout the countryside for thousands of years. This is in contrast to our neighbours the british, or even the Vikings,- who brought the concept of fixef towns and villages here.
Should they now leave and head for the cities because you, - a town or city dweller thinks so?

Not likely buddy. Mind your own business, you have one vote same as me or anyone else. Live wherever you want to, but don't fcuking presume to tell me where to live.

comongethappy

Freddie Dodge wrote: »

Should they now leave and head for the cities because you, - a town or city dweller thinks so?

Not likely buddy. Mind your own business, you have one vote same as me or anyone else. Live wherever you want to, but don't fcuking presume to tell me where to live.

That's fine.
Just don't b*tch about lack of facilities, jobs or investment.

You make your choice, you make the best of it.
Just know, scattering yourselves all over the place will not enhance the likleyhood of investment in your area any time soon.

Freddie Dodge

comongethappy wrote: »

That's fine.
Just don't b*tch about lack of facilities, jobs or investment.

You make your choice, you make the best of it.
Just know, scattering yourselves all over the place will not enhance the likleyhood of investment in your area any time soon.

Please quote me bitching about any of the above.

I'm not in favour of pissing away resources on every village. However I did suggest actively growing Cork, Galway and Limerick.

Sleepy

Freddie Dodge wrote: »

Ok Charlie, I was with you to this point↑↑↑↑

Then you came out with this ↓↓↓↓ which is frankly the biggest load of unadulterated crap I've read in a long while.

Irish people have lived scattered throughout the countryside for thousands of years. This is in contrast to our neighbours the british, or even the Vikings,- who brought the concept of fixef towns and villages here.
Should they now leave and head for the cities because you, - a town or city dweller thinks so?

Not likely buddy. Mind your own business, you have one vote same as me or anyone else. Live wherever you want to, but don't fcuking presume to tell me where to live.

It's not that I've any issue with someone living rurally. I can see the appeal of clean air, plenty of green space, no neighbours etc. If someone wants to live in the countryside, that's absolutely fine by me, as long as your home isn't a blight on the landscape (as many of the McMansions thrown up during the boom are) and you don't expect the rest of society to subsidize it in any form.

The problem is, most Irish rural dwellers seem to be incapable of accepting that these things come at some fairly major costs and seem to feel they have the right to demand:

That the state spend more educating their children than it does on the children of urban dwellers by funding small rural schools that don't have sufficient numbers to be run economically.
That, even if they can't afford to tax/insure it, they have some inviolable right to run a car because they live in an area where it's economically nonviable to provide regular public transport.
The "right" to sit and claim unemployment benefit rather than relocate for employment when there's none available in their locale (though to be fair, plenty of urbanites seem to feel this is a right too).
That high-speed broadband is some kind of human right which private telecoms companies are obliged to provide them with.
That emergency services should be able to respond to them as quickly as to urbanites who live in areas with the critical mass to fund such services.

The ability to buy a lovely 5 bed home on an acre or more of land for less than a 3 bed terrace in the suburbs comes at a price. If you're prepared to pay that price: to drive your kids miles to the nearest town to be educated, to earn your living working from home or with a large commute, to live without or pay for expensive / poorer alternatives to cable/fibre broadband (e.g. Satellite), to run the risk of an ambulance not being able to get to you in time should you have a heart attack and will happily pay all the same taxes as the rest of us while doing so, fair play, that's your choice and I'd never seek to take it from you.

Quin_Dub

As someone how made the move from urban living to rural living 10 years ago I'd agree with some of what you say but not all.

Sleepy wrote: »

The problem is, most Irish rural dwellers seem to be incapable of accepting that these things come at some fairly major costs and seem to feel they have the right to demand:

That the state spend more educating their children than it does on the children of urban dwellers by funding small rural schools that don't have sufficient numbers to be run economically.

Totally agree here - utterly senseless to have multiple tiny schools dotted around the area.. In my locality , the "large" primary school has decent facilities and about 300 pupils, however within a 5-10 mile radius there are 4 other schools with anything from 30 to 70 pupils.. most with virtually no facilities... Cannot grasp why these schools exist...

Sleepy wrote: »

That, even if they can't afford to tax/insure it, they have some inviolable right to run a car because they live in an area where it's economically nonviable to provide regular public transport.

Again - Agree here , costs of running my car are part of the trade-off involved in living where I live...

Sleepy wrote: »

The "right" to sit and claim unemployment benefit rather than relocate for employment when there's none available in their locale (though to be fair, plenty of urbanites seem to feel this is a right too).

Again , no complaint here , you go to where the work is.. I work remotely so I'm in a lucky situation that my location is not an issue work-wise , but if that were to change then a long commute is to be expected & accepted..

Sleepy wrote: »

That high-speed broadband is some kind of human right which private telecoms companies are obliged to provide them with.

This is where we disagree - If they can run power/phone to my house, they should be able to run Broadband at a reasonable level... I'm a realist - Not expecting 100mbs fibre service anytime soon, but I do think that regardless of location that a broadband service of max 2mb with horrendous contention leaving the service unusable at evening and week-ends is unacceptable.

If I was able to get a ~10mb un-contended service (which by the way my phone line is capable of today, it's just the lack of back-haul to the exchange that's the problem) I would be happy to accept that as a function of my location... Less than that is an real problem.

Sleepy wrote: »

That emergency services should be able to respond to them as quickly as to urbanites who live in areas with the critical mass to fund such services.

A bit torn on this one - Yes , unreasonable to expect a 10 minute response time when you are 20-30 minutes from the nearest major town.. however when they have shut that towns A&E down which means that after the emergency service arrive you have a 60-90 minute trip to the hospital , that's an issue that needs to be addressed

Sleepy wrote: »

The ability to buy a lovely 5 bed home on an acre or more of land for less than a 3 bed terrace in the suburbs comes at a price. If you're prepared to pay that price: to drive your kids miles to the nearest town to be educated, to earn your living working from home or with a large commute, to live without or pay for expensive / poorer alternatives to cable/fibre broadband (e.g. Satellite), to run the risk of an ambulance not being able to get to you in time should you have a heart attack and will happily pay all the same taxes as the rest of us while doing so, fair play, that's your choice and I'd never seek to take it from you.

As I have done exactly, this I fully accept the trade-offs involved in this arrangement , however I do believe that some items/levels of service should have a universal baseline regardless of location , however that it not being delivered...

ScumLord

Freddie Dodge wrote: »

Comongethappy has a good point, other countries have several decent sized cities rather than one which overweighs the rest.
Why is Ireland like this? Mostly historical, partly economics.
How can it be fixed? Govt investment and incentives to invest in Cork, Limerick & Galway.
Fibre broadband outside the cities and large towns would help.

Ireland could easily fit our entire population into those four cities if it was done right. They could pick a city, Galway would probably be one of the easier ones as it's smaller and in bad need of proper management and just modernise it to be capable of handling a million people.

Davarus Walrus wrote: »

Very little that can be done. Manufacturing in Ireland is on the way out,

Manufacturing isn't on the way out it's just Irish people won't pay for Irish goods anymore. We're still exporting our goods to people willing to pay. We've converted to a cheap and disposable consumer.

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Decentralisation?

Didnt they try this in the boom times and the whole thing just did not work?

Just because our boom government couldn't do it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Sleepy

Quin_Dub wrote: »

AThis is where we disagree - If they can run power/phone to my house, they should be able to run Broadband at a reasonable level... I'm a realist - Not expecting 100mbs fibre service anytime soon, but I do think that regardless of location that a broadband service of max 2mb with horrendous contention leaving the service unusable at evening and week-ends is unacceptable.

If I was able to get a ~10mb un-contended service (which by the way my phone line is capable of today, it's just the lack of back-haul to the exchange that's the problem) I would be happy to accept that as a function of my location... Less than that is an real problem.

To an extent, I agree, basic broadband should be available. However, if it's going to cost the company providing the service X thousand euros to deliver the service to Y households, the cost to each household should be x thousand / Y unless Y is sufficiently high to make the investment economically viable for the organisation in question (say a payback period of 3-5 years).

Expecting to be able to get 10mb broadband in a house on the outskirts of Kilcoole, Tullow or Athenry seems reasonable enough to me. Expecting it in a one-off build built on a boreen off the R201 in Leitrim at no additional cost to the household is quite another...

A bit torn on this one - Yes , unreasonable to expect a 10 minute response time when you are 20-30 minutes from the nearest major town.. however when they have shut that towns A&E down which means that after the emergency service arrive you have a 60-90 minute trip to the hospital , that's an issue that needs to be addressed

If the taxation received from the population within 20/30 minute radius of that town is high enough to pay for that A&E along with the other public services they receive, fair enough. Otherwise, they're asking to have their healthcare subsidized. (Overly simplistic I know as the level Health Insurance penetration would play a factor too but you get the point).

As I have done exactly, this I fully accept the trade-offs involved in this arrangement , however I do believe that some items/levels of service should have a universal baseline regardless of location , however that it not being delivered...

I think we're broadly in agreement tbh. I believe we should have universal access to healthcare, education and justice. But I believe the convenience of access to those things will always be determined by geographic demographics and that people have no right to expect their lifestyle choices to be funded by others.

Bog Standard User

increase corpo tax by 1% in dublin reduce it by 1% outside dublin then you will see big compaines choose the towns and cities outside of dublin

Sleepy

Do you really think that would have any effect other than to make Ireland less attractive to MNC's in general?

While the low corporation tax has it's part in attracting them to Ireland, they're quite happy to pay a premium in rents, rates and wages to base in Dublin over the regions already, why do you think a small reduction in corporation tax would make any difference?

It's the talent pool they're locating in/near Dublin for (hence Drogheda's recent performance at attracting jobs). The regions just don't have that to offer and, unfortunate as it is, we can't compete internationally for low skilled manufacturing work that can be based near areas of low population.

Quin_Dub

Sleepy wrote: »

Do you really think that would have any effect other than to make Ireland less attractive to MNC's in general?

While the low corporation tax has it's part in attracting them to Ireland, they're quite happy to pay a premium in rents, rates and wages to base in Dublin over the regions already, why do you think a small reduction in corporation tax would make any difference?

It's the talent pool they're locating in/near Dublin for (hence Drogheda's recent performance at attracting jobs). The regions just don't have that to offer and, unfortunate as it is, we can't compete internationally for low skilled manufacturing work that can be based near areas of low population.

I think that there's a bit of chicken & egg here to be honest...

They want to be in Dublin because that's where the staff are.. but the staff are there because that's where the jobs are to a large extent. The people being hired by the Large corporates are not all Dublin natives - they are moving to the jobs...

Are there lots of qualified High Tech Staff in one of the mid-sized towns in Ireland - Navan, Ennis , Kilkenny etc. today? Probably not , but if a major firm announced a big facility with several hundred positions , they fill them with people moving there with no problems...