Irish Examiner view: The clock is ticking on housing and infrastructure projects
Most pressing of all the current Government's challenges is the slow progress in housing. File picture: Getty
Why is it that the delivery of major infrastructural projects in this country is consistently beset by delays, financial overruns, and the sort of political fractiousness and frustration that can only be brought on by incompetent governance?
A glance at any newspaper over the past year will reveal how one or another vital piece of infrastructure — be it hospitals, roads, housing developments, water delivery, or green energy initiatives — is being delayed or abandoned because of planning rows, investment concerns, or opposition from fringe interests.
Having played infrastructure as a major card in the last election campaign, this Government now needs to show vision and determination to see its plans come to fruition.
Sadly, though, we are seeing none of that.
As a result, efforts to see the likes of a national maternity hospital, Dublin’s Metrolink, a decades-long need to invest in water and wastewater treatment facilities, and a variety of road and rail projects, are being unnecessarily bogged down.
So too the development of four large offshore windfarms, which are at the centre of government plans to hit net zero emissions and are in disarray with one — at the Sceirde rocks off Connemara — already having been pulled by its promoters because of planning delays.
But most pressing is the housing crisis. Opposition parties are trying their best to take advantage of growing frustration and anger by organising a national day of protest on June 17 as part of the Raise the Roof initiative.
“We want the largest number of people who are angry and frustrated in the first instance with the Government’s failures on housing but also any other issue that this Government is failing on and the list is very long,” Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said yesterday.
Many of these calamities were not unpredictable but they put an sharp focus on a government which appears to be floundering. It’s time for the Government to act, and decisively. The clock is ticking.
The bluff and bluster that have characterised Donald Trump’s second term in the Oval Office are beginning to wear thin and it is now imperative that the US president takes affirmative action, not least against Russia.
With his global economic policies in turmoil — along with global markets — because of his insufferable bullying and his threats of savage trade tariffs often turning into empty and shallow shadow games, Trump has more often looked foolish rather than the strongman he wishes to be perceived as.
So too his promise of bringing peace to Ukraine. Having pledged to halt the conflict “within days” of coming back to office, Trump has been played like a sucker by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Despite Trump’s assertion, following a two hour phone call with Putin last week, that because Moscow was ready to begin immediate ceasefire negotiations with Kyiv, he was unwilling to join Europe with fresh sanctions against Russia, he has seen his efforts unravel in a blitzkrieg of drone and cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets at the weekend.
Patience is not a characteristic Trump is noted for, but his unwillingness to further punish Putin and his regime is as mysterious as his readiness to attack Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at any opportunity — up to and including blaming him for starting the war.
Trump’s narcissistic streak — he likes to be portrayed as a global strongman who bends people to his will without fail — is coming apart in the face of Putin’s arrogance.
That Trump described the Russian leader as “crazy” because of Russia’s increased bombardment of Ukrainian targets, is a measure of understandable frustration.
But, with the likes of French president Emmanuel Macron, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, and German foreign minister Johann Wadephul adamant that Putin lied to Trump, even still there is no action from the White House. Trump needs to up his game if he is not to be seen as a puppet of Putin’s or, worse, a leader who has no idea what he’s doing.
In these columns last week, we called on the Munster branch of the IRFU to consider bringing more big games to rugby-hungry fans in Cork by utilising Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Within days, the branch announced that at least one Champions Cup game and two URC fixtures will be played at the Blackrock venue next season.
It is very welcome not only that the sport’s authorities finally recognised the crying need for big-ticket games in Cork in order to appease supporter demand, but also that they have finally recognised such a move would be hugely financially beneficial to both them and Cork GAA.
For many years, the Munster branch’s policy of only holding Champions Cup fixtures in Thomond Park, along with all the glamour URC ties, and only playing second-tier matches at Virgin Media Park in Cork, failed to meet the obvious demand that existed in the city for even an occasional big game.
The city had shown its appetite for such ties when Munster played both South Africa and the New Zealand Maoris in front of full houses at Cork GAA HQ in recent years. The desire for more was plainly evident.
Now they have bitten that particular bullet and announced the aim to offer a bit more to the Cork public next season, perhaps they should ponder expanding their reach even further. Would taking a game to venues such as Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney or Semple Stadium in Thurles not help to expand the appeal of the game, and Munster rugby as a whole?
Were it even to hold games in Limerick’s Gaelic Grounds — just up the road from its own ‘fortress’ of Thomond Park — would that not also generate more money and help develop a wider audience?
The professional game needs to be both profitable and popular and if Munster were to expand the province’s reach, then the game itself would be the real winner.
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