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THE GOVERNMENT HAS been warned that there are significant shortfalls in four key areas of Ireland’s infrastructure.
Almost 80,000 additional workers may be needed to address Ireland’s infrastructure deficits according to the report by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council.
It said that housing, healthcare, transport and electricity are the big challenge, with reforms “essential” to address the country’s weaknesses.
The Fiscal Council is responsible for providing independent assessments of how the Government is managing the public finances and the economy.
In a new report, the watchdog blamed the “slow and unpredictable nature” of our planning system for increasing the costs and delaying the delivery of infrastructure.
This new publication by staff at the Fiscal Council assesses Ireland’s infrastructure relative to other high-income European countries.
The 80,000 additional workers referenced by the group are needed mainly to build new housing and retrofitting existing homes, the report said.
However, it believes that “improved productivity” in the construction sector could significantly reduce this number to “less than 20,000″ workers.
The report’s lead author Niall Conroy said that Ireland’s infrastructure deficits are “long-standing issues which cannot be resolved overnight”, therefore requiring a planned and multi-year approach.
“Ireland already spends a high amount on public investment relative to the size of its economy. The challenge is sustaining this and getting better value for money,” Conroy said.
Addressing these infrastructure deficits could require an almost 80,000 additional construction workers. These are mostly required for building new housing and retrofitting existing homes. If productivity in the construction sector were improved, less than 20,000 extra workers would be needed. Reallocating existing construction workers to these projects could help too.”
The advisory council holds back from expressing confidence in whether the government’s new planning and development laws will assist in delivering infrastructure, simply noting that “time will tell” whether the reforms will succeed.
While the council says that some additional government investment may be required to deliver, it maintains that the amounts required are “modest relative to overall government spending”.
“Getting better value for money on existing spending could also help address infrastructure deficits,” the report said.
The council noted that Ireland has historically had a low level of infrastructure. While a gap to other high-income countries in Europe has narrowed from 47% per person in 1995, it still stands at 25% today.
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A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.
@AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.
maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.
@Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?
Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.
The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.
@Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell
@Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.
@Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but
@Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.
While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.
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