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How would you spend a €19 billion windfall Apple?

SafeSurfer

Ireland may be about to receive a €19 billion back tax windfall from Apple.

How would you spend it?

I would like to see investment in infrastructure projects. Motorways linking all major cities could ease the housing crisis. Making it more feasible to commute from smaller towns and villages that are declining in rural Ireland.
Make quality broadband available nationwide. The next Google or Facebook could as easily base its Irish HQ in the Galway Docks as the Dublin Docks.
Dublin airport and Dublin's cultural reputation being its main advantages.

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511

TallGlass wrote: »

As a Dublin tax payer, I have no problem with my money going down to the sticks, provided its for a good cause and helps people out, I do think everyone in 2016 should have access for a 50/100mb connection.

It's a lot of money, though, and it could go to waste in the future if rural homes are abandoned. I see a few abandoned cottages in my area and it would be a complete waste to fibre those dwellings.

We have a very high rural population compared to other European countries and it's because the industrial revolution hit Ireland later than the others. In the 1960s, 66% of our population lived in rural areas, now it's 35%.

The problem with us Irish is that we area very short-sighted bunch that love wasting money.

c_man

We could give all income tax payers a break of about ten grand a head? Extra spending could boost the economy, hell we could all buy new Macbooks :P

I would think some should go on a decent infrastructure project (one of the shelved ones), pay off a bit of the debt and re-fund some of the cancelled support groups for mental health/youth groups/various illnesses.

Caliden

Hospitals and homes.

Have an independent body oversee it's investment in both so it's not wasted.

Caliden

Hospitals and homes.

Have an independent body oversee it's investment in both so it's not wasted.

arayess

RobertKK wrote: »

The government have said they will repeal if Apple loses their case to the European Commission, that the benefits of Apple losing are somehow less than Apple winning their case.

We would likely only get a nominal sum in comparison to €19 billion if Apple loses and any repeal of the judgement fails.

I read that too
That's just beautiful , the state is going to appeal a case where ireland is told to take the money.

I'm all on for supporting low corporation tax to attract direct investment into ireland but there are limits to how we should be rode on this.
Giving these companies a free ride only means the tax payer pays for the shortfall or state services suffer.

TallGlass

511 wrote: »

It's a lot of money, though, and it could go to waste in the future if rural homes are abandoned. I see a few abandoned cottages in my area and it would be a complete waste to fibre those dwellings.

We have a very high rural population compared to other European countries and it's because the industrial revolution hit Ireland later than the others. In the 1960s, 66% of our population lived in rural areas, now it's 35%.

The problem with us Irish is that we area very short-sighted bunch that love wasting money.

But the same could be said for Dublin, you could fiber up 50/60 homes as an example and only 10 could want it. What I meant by my post is to give these guys the option to have it, build the infrastructure to do so and it's not just personal connections I have heard of businesses complaining about the connections and speed.

Akrasia

straight to Vegas and put it all on Black.

First Up

Eugene Norman wrote:

Dublin is expensive because we don't build enough housing. And we didn't really build slums. Clearly we need more buildings

Who is "we"?

d2ww

It would all go towards reducing the €200,000,000,000 deficit because the EU's expenditure benchmark kicks in this year.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/dan-obrien/hope-will-turn-to-anger-as-reality-of-our-spending-power-hits-home-34391157.html

PC Lackey

Our democracy is the key thing to enhance.
If we could improve bring it into the electronic age that would be a major win.

Some kind of electronic voting innovation perhaps.

silverharp

Write f*ck off Merkel on the moon

Tabnabs

Redundancy fees for the over-bloated civil and public service. Reforming that would bring huge dividends to the country for generations to come.

SafeSurfer

511 wrote: »

It would be even better if you guys moved to urban areas instead of expecting urban-dwellers pay for every service yous get. Only farmers should be living in rural parts.

This money should go towards the needs of the urban-dwellers as they are the one who subsidize the rural-dwellers. Dublin Underground and Metro North are a much bigger priority than rural needs.

The money left over should be used to speed up urbanization in Ireland as it's happened in pretty much every other Western country.

Only farmers should live in rural Ireland? You do realise that even farmers need shops, doctors, pubs, restaurants, vets, postal workers etc. a lot of jobs that are done by people currently clogging up the M50 could be down from anywhere in Ireland given a decent broadband connection.

ScumLord

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Dublin is expensive because we don't build enough housing. And we didn't really build slums. Clearly we need more buildings

Dublin needs to start building up. It would be a lot easier to make high volume transport system if there was the volume there to justify it.

511 wrote: »

It would be even better if you guys moved to urban areas instead of expecting urban-dwellers pay for every service yous get. Only farmers should be living in rural parts.

As much as I'd hate living in a city, I wouldn't be opposed to Ireland trying to move more people into urban areas. But it should come with an initiative to recover the islands ecosystems. Our island has been pretty devastated by human occupation.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Spend every cent of that 19 billion on an underground train system and a much better tram system that serves more than two lines. We should get a good carriage or two for that 19 billion

stimpson

Has nobody suggested blowing it on hookers and cocaine yet?

Standards in AH are slipping

stimpson

Has nobody suggested blowing it on hookers and cocaine yet?

Standards in AH are slipping

everlast75

Nixon Slimy Gingersnap wrote: »

Spend every cent of that 19 billion on an underground train system and a much better tram system that serves more than two lines. We should get a good carriage or two for that 19 billion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM

Toto Wolfcastle

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Cake. Cake for everyone. A month long 'Festival of Cake' in the spring time.

I like this idea. Everyone would be entitled to free regular cake. Gluten/wheat/sugar/dairy free/vegan cake would be available for an extra fee. Coeliacs could claim the fee back using the Med 1 form. Diabetics would have their fee paid using their long term illness book. Special little snowflakes who wanted different cake because of a lifestyle choice rather than a medical issue would have to pay the fee.

Those who do not like cake would be forced to sit in the corner and think about what they've done. (Unless they paid a small release fee.)

People get cake and it raises a bit of money. Win-win.

howamidifferent

Setup a free methadone/heroin clinic on Skellig Michael with pallets of free dutch gold and tracksuits with white socks and free hoodys. Free transport over.

Then drop a big bomb on it...:D

etoughguy

Huge salary increases for our struggling politicians

chops018

SafeSurfer wrote: »

Ireland may be about to receive a €19 billion back tax windfall from Apple.

How would you spend it?

I would like to see investment in infrastructure projects. Motorways linking all major cities could ease the housing crisis. Making it more feasible to commute from smaller towns and villages that are declining in rural Ireland.
Make quality broadband available nationwide. The next Google or Facebook could as easily base its Irish HQ in the Galway Docks as the Dublin Docks.
Dublin airport and Dublin's cultural reputation being its main advantages.

You do know that there is motorways linking all the cities to Dublin, and in turn linking a lot of them to eachother - M1, M2, M3, M6, M7, M8, M9, M18, M20. Not to mention lots of great national roads.

Irelands infrastructure has vastly improved in the last 10 years. You can drive from Cork to Belfast now without hitting a traffic light with that much Motorway.

What more do you want? A motorway to/from Timahoe so Bridie can get to the nearest shopping centre 15 mins quicker.

I've experience of these motorways, once you get past Portlaoise on the M7/M8 you could be driving for miles before seeing another car.

It is great that we have them there and reduces journey time but we don't have the population around the rest of Ireland that permits the need for our current motorways, never mind adding more.

Sort the infrastructure in Dublin first (and I'm not even from Dublin or live there) you could be an hour trying to get less than 10km in the mornings at rush hour, ridiculous.

ScumLord

chops018 wrote: »

You do know that there is motorways linking all the cities to Dublin,

Which is grand if you're going to Dublin. I had to drive from Mayo to Cork at the weekend and it was a nightmare, there's a bit of motorway but after that it's all normal roads where one person doing 60kph means everyone else is stuck doing that speed. The motorway connecting Galway to Dublin doesn't really help most of the people living and working in Galway. While there's a practically empty motorway (in county galway) there for the benefit of people traveling to Dublin airport everyone trying to get to work is stuck in mind numbing traffic.

Plus people are just driving slower and slower these days, the amount of people doing 70kph and slower these days is driving me soft. They seem to assume if they're driving slow they're driving safe, so they can look out the side window, be engrossed in conversation with their passenger and are completely unprepared for anything that might happen in front of their car. We badly need some motorways around the country to counteract these incompetent drivers.

fleet_admiral

An underground rail system for Dublin would be a start. A second runway too for Dublin airport would be on the list. Id give Cork a proper rail system like it used to have too

Zebra3

We could top up the pensions of retired politicians like Bertie and Biffo who must be struggling to get by and don't get the recognition they deserve for all the great work they did for the country.

And build a pyramid for Charlie's corpse. Solid gold and fill it with those fancy shirts.

chops018

ScumLord wrote: »

Which is grand if you're going to Dublin. I had to drive from Mayo to Cork at the weekend and it was a nightmare, there's a bit of motorway but after that it's all normal roads where one person doing 60kph means everyone else is stuck doing that speed. The motorway connecting Galway to Dublin doesn't really help most of the people living and working in Galway. While there's a practically empty motorway (in county galway) there for the benefit of people traveling to Dublin airport everyone trying to get to work is stuck in mind numbing traffic.

Plus people are just driving slower and slower these days, the amount of people doing 70kph and slower these days is driving me soft. They seem to assume if they're driving slow they're driving safe, so they can look out the side window, be engrossed in conversation with their passenger and are completely unprepared for anything that might happen in front of their car. We badly need some motorways around the country to counteract these incompetent drivers.

That's my point - there is never a huge amount of cars on these motorways, what was the point in spending all the millions on them!? Better to have them there though I suppose....

Anyway these motorways don't just link to Dublin, there is exits to a lot of major towns on the way to these other so called cities like "Cork", "Galway", "Waterford", and "Limerick".

Ireland has plenty of motorways these days linking many of the cities and large towns to eachother.

I commiserate that driving to Mayo from Cork was a nightmare, but they can't have motorway to every town there is to be honest, you said there was some motorway on the way, some parts of the country can't be all motorway.

What kind of roads do you want around Galway or Limerick etc? Surely there is no need for an M50 orbital road or the like, the population surely isn't enough. Not too sure on how Galway is traffic wise for people working in and around there. But my argument is that so called city's like Galway, want all these roads when their population is only around what, 100,000-ish people, whereas Dublin is near 1,000,000 with the city and the surrounding areas.

As for road users doing under the speed limit, I agree, that is a pain, and can cause delay.

[Deleted User]

Bypass through Macroom. That's the only road I'm waiting for!

maudgonner

chops018 wrote: »

Anyway these motorways don't just link to Dublin, there is exits to a lot of major towns on the way to these other so called cities like "Cork", "Galway", "Waterford", and "Limerick".

I wrote a reply to the earlier post, but then I saw this and figured there was no point, must be trolling.

FFS, I really hate the "Dublin is the only city in Ireland worthy of the name" rubbish.

chops018

maudgonner wrote: »

I wrote a reply to the earlier post, but then I saw this and figured there was no point, must be trolling.

FFS, I really hate the "Dublin is the only city in Ireland worthy of the name" rubbish.

I'm not trolling, and I'm not from Dublin either. Would be interested in hearing your reply too, might change my mind or inform me, am genuinely interested.

I'm not trying to offend anyone but personally I don't think any of these places justify being labelled as a city with such a low population and no huge backbone.

Cork, yes, that would be a major city. But the others, on a European scale they just don't feel like cities, rather just "large towns".

The Backwards Man

chops018 wrote: »

You do know that there is motorways linking all the cities to Dublin.

Where's the one linking Dublin to the fourth largest city on the island? Or the third largest town outside Leinster?