Irish Examiner view: Delay is the word of 2023 so far

Delays have become the new normal, and there is barely an aspect of modern life which escapes the baleful shadow

For drivers booking NCTs, the next available date offered online for Cork’s Blarney centre is June 26, while for Little Island it is June 30, Charleville is June 28, Macroom July 7, Skibbereen June 19, and Youghal July 18.

Every year various organisations, often those who publish dictionaries or operate search engines, vie with each other to nominate a word or phrase which best sums up our collective experience over 12 months.

“Goblin mode” was a favoured choice in 2022. Other popular selections have been “gaslighting”; “perma-crisis” “endemic” and “doomscrolling.” None of them are cheerful.

There’s already an early contender nine days into 2023. It has been around in various forms for the past three years, but it has a beguiling simplicity while simultaneously containing the ability to send us all into a rage. 

It derives from Middle English and French and is fashionably short at five letters, giving it the opportunity of stardom in a daily Wordle.

Delay. It’s become the new normal, and there is barely an aspect of modern life which escapes its baleful shadow.

Motorists trying to book their NCT can be told the centre they require has a waiting list of six months or more. A check by an Irish Examiner reporter at the weekend showed the next available date offered online for Cork’s Blarney centre is June 26, while for Little Island it is June 30, Charleville is June 28, Macroom July 7, Skibbereen June 19, and Youghal July 18. 

Applus, the firm that runs the NCTS on behalf of the Road Safety Authority, advises that the workaround to “computer says no” is for drivers to log back on and place themselves on a “priority list”. But if everyone does that, it will become a little like joining the priority queue for a Ryanair flight, one among many.

Across at the Adoption Authority of Ireland it is now confirmed that there will be significant delays in granting some 6,000 people access to records under the 2022 Birth Information and Tracing Act. After being told that they would get their data in 30 days, this was then extended to 90 days. Now “early autumn” is the target.

Everyone is familiar with the problems in hospitals, but they extend, also, to patients who wish to visit GPs, with the Irish Medical Organisation warning this weekend that delays can only become longer. The problems at Dublin Airport also remain fresh in the memory of consumers.

In many ways these failures have been predicted and have the same common causes. Insufficient staff, both trained and untrained. Inability to recruit. Excessive bureaucracy. Surges in demand which always seem to be “unprecedented”. And over-optimistic promises on delivery.

Until companies and politicians start to level with the general public the shared experience will continue to be disappointment and/or anger. And logistics will maintain its new-found and richly-deserved notoriety as “the dismal science.”