Re: Re: European Environment Agency cites Dublin as a worst case scenario of urban planning

Clientelism in Irish politics isn’t necessarily down to corrupt politicans though. We’ve a political system that tends to focus all political resources directly on to local constituency issues with very little interest in long term planning. Poliiticans are in multi-seat constituencies and there’s constant point scoring etc required to maintain their position and insure retention of their seat.

The Irish system’s arguabably highly democratic, but it’s not great for long term planning / big picture issues.

It’s always been noted that dictatorships tend to have excellent planning, great roads, trains that run on time. Perhaps our generally chatoic system is just an indicator of our very deep and locally focused democracy at work!
i.e. we can’t organise anything!