Re: Re: Aren’t the Irish Independent Property Supplement a disgrace?

Still in the slow land

THE Edgeworthstown bypass opened yesterday with little fanfare. Quite right too. Too often in the recent past, governments, and not only the Fianna Fail-PD coalition, cackled like a hen laying an egg every time they unveiled a few kilometres of motorway and dual carriageway.

It was scandalous that these roads were constructed in that piecemeal fashion, and degrading that politicians boasted of achievements which were trifling by comparison with the progress made in poorer countries like Portugal.

Our motorway programme should have started 30 years ago. An entire network should have been completed 15 years ago at the very latest. Instead, even now, even after 12 years of the Celtic Tiger, we proceed at a snail’s pace.

The phrase is singularly appropriate here. A campaign to save a rare snail held up the Kildare bypass. A campaign to save an insignificant castle placed the M50 in its present weird condition, neither finished nor unfinished.

Projects that in other countries whizz along are delayed unconscionably in Ireland by antics like the Carrickmines Castle affair.

But it is not enough to blame factors like these. A government that really wants things done will get them done. But the present Government has consistently underspent on the capital side of the Budget. Planning and vision both call for a different style.

Todays editorial in the Irish Independent

Whilst I agree with much of the above the presumption that infrastructure can be steamrolled through without heed to due process is not strictly true it is worth remembering that the Kildare Bypass project was stopped by the European Commission and Carrickmines was entirely avoidable.