Gov' Unveils €39 Billion Capital Investment Plan (2010-2016)

[PVC King]

Did you know that there is a Facebook page extolling the virtue of the use of the bizarre word amn't?

I was using pre-fabs as an example of the appalling state of Irish schools. My point is simply that primary and secondary education are more in need of funding than one third level project, especially one costing c. €500million. A person on another site is in favour of it because, at present, they "have to go to three different libraries for their books". Most secondary schools would kill for just one library. infrastucture "projects" which are really just (white) elephants in the room.

I think that the project for Grangegorman is a good idea; there would be the potential to cut back a number of duplicated administrative functions that are currently provided across a number of different sites; not to mention the fact that the main DIT adminstriative function was undertaken for many years at Pembroke St which is not attached to any of their disperate colleges.

The issue for me is not the principal it is that doing it now would result in a loss of focus from the urgent need to create more places to upskill umemployed people who will leave the country if they are left to rot much longer; the second consideraton is the manner of funding it; the Grangegorman project can at the right point of the property cycle be heavily subsidised by selling their existing buildings for conversion into other uses such as offices or residential; this would clearly be the wrong point in the cycle to agree a sale post completion of Grangegorman and vacant possession being delivered.

I expect to see Grangegorman built at some future point as there is a clear rationale to the project; the focus of DIT, DCU, TCD and NUI at this time should be to build once in a generation capacity to retrain the 100,000 or so structurally unemployed people; given the number of vacant office buildings available on soft terms, facilities provision is the least challenging aspect of them playing their part in converting 100,000 drawers on scarce rersouces to 100,000 contributors to paying down the national debt.

[missarchi]

Hopefully it all pans out well.
Britain gets first new bank in 100 years...