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

does anyone know what projects under the 2007-2013 plan have been carried forward into this plan? and of those how many have yet to be started?

I ask this because I don’t see how the money could be justified for essentially frivolous projects such as either Metro North or the DART underground and I’d imagine that they’ll slip into the NDP2013-2016 and beyond

Custers last stand……

Are you sure you didn’t mean 2023-2026?

You have just seen the unfortunate demise of Dart underground; a most regressive step; no way that the exchequer deficit can handle €39bn over that period; this government has an exceptional ability to listen to none of the research they underwrite be it Merrill Lynch or the ESRI.

That said the productive sector is starting to look a much rosier picture however with an exchequer deficit approaching 20% it is time for a reality check.

no mention of the Cork Docklands’ bridge

surely in a budget of €39bn they can source €60 million for a project seen as so vital for the growth of Cork Docklands…?

then again, Cork is far away from Dublin.

@PVC King wrote:

You have just seen the unfortunate demise of Dart underground; a most regressive step; no way that the exchequer deficit can handle €39bn over that period; this government has an exceptional ability to listen to none of the research they underwrite be it Merrill Lynch or the ESRI.

Surely we’ve seen the opposite? It, along with Metro North, has been spared the axe?

OK, I’m aware that this whole announcement does need to be taken with a cargo-load of salt… but I get the impression that on the day Metro North opens, you’ll find PVC King outside the O’Connell Bridge station, with his fingers in his ears, shouting ‘The Metro will never be built’ over and over.

Yes, a healthy dose of cynicism is required whenever this government announce anything, but PVC’s proclamations of doom are increasing in desperation it seems. But, of course, bully for him if he’s proven right.

OK, I’m aware that this whole announcement does need to be taken with a cargo-load of salt… but I get the impression that on the day Metro North opens, you’ll find PVC King outside the O’Connell Bridge station, with his fingers in his ears, shouting ‘The Metro will never be built’ over and over.

Yes, a healthy dose of cynicism is required whenever this government announce anything, but PVC’s proclamations of doom are increasing in desperation it seems. But, of course, bully for him if he’s proven right.

I will be sitting on the beach in St Martin happily retired by the time either metro north is built or the time metro north is built and the IMF have given the Dept of Finance back to the electorate.

Include Metro North as is with the hugely expensive City Centre underground section, the Tuam motorway and other completely over-spec’d projects and you will have the IMF running the country.

Conversely target investment into projects like Dart underground and built Metro North as Luas from DCU into the Luas Link up and preserve scarce capital investment to invest in REAL JOB CREATION and then the focus will grow the economy by allowing future governments space to cut taxes and attract the highly mobile Foreign Direct Investment that has lifted the country from second World to First World before reality was abandoned in the run up to 2008; just one example of private sector innovation; Blackrock Fund Managers based in the IFSC have developed a financial product called I-Shares (ETF) which allows investors to avoid paying stamp duty in tracking global indexes; margins are small but the potential is vast if they can crack the European market to same extent that ETFs dominate North American investment; give those guys €100k a job and they’ll still be there in 10 years by which time all of the subsidy is paid back.

I’d love to see Metro North being viable; bring back the boom where 95,000 residential units are being built a year and unemployment is sub 4%. Sadly projects like Metro North and the Tuam Motorway are a luxury that have passed their sell by date.

So to back away from the endless repetition of the same opinions: does anyone know the story with Grangegorman, news sites are saying it’s to go ahead, but I can’t find it mentioned anywhere in the document or in the speeches, is it included in the 0.65B EUR for higher education?

@notjim wrote:

So to back away from the endless repetition of the same opinions: does anyone know the story with Grangegorman, news sites are saying it’s to go ahead, but I can’t find it mentioned anywhere in the document or in the speeches, is it included in the 0.65B EUR for higher education?

Notjim,

I’m interested in this also. Today’s IT mentioned annual funding of some 30 million (I think-don’t have it in front of me) – but I’m afraid I’m not convinced.

The quote from the online version is:

However, a number of major projects will go ahead as planned, if not quite to the timetable originally envisaged. They include the Metro North underground railway as well as the new underground Dublin interconnector that will link all the different rail systems in Dublin city centre.

The major plan to bring all the colleges of the Dublin Institute of Technology together in once campus at Grangegorman will still go ahead.

It’s possible that I have grown cynical – but the “not quite to the timetable envisaged” worries me. I suppose, to be realistic (and fair) it was never going to happen in the timetable envisaged give the fall in property values and the reliance on disposal of DIT property for part funding?

In fairness, at least they havn’t scrapped it.

I know, the online news stories are worrying, but better than the document itself, which has some language about how third level numbers are growing but major investment isn’t envisaged and then provision of 650 million and something about “targetted investment will be made when a robust economic argument can be made”. If it is going ahead and the news papers know the information is being communicated in a form that doesn’t appear online, which is as annoying as hell considering they published a 130 page document today.

So according to

http://www.twitter.com/Grangegormandev

this was confirmed in a press briefing.

Update:
Even though the Dublin – Navan rail link wasn’t included in the plan, Dempsey has just announced that it will go ahead and should be completed by either 2015 or 2016.

@notjim wrote:

So according to

http://www.twitter.com/Grangegormandev

this was confirmed in a press briefing.

I love your optimism; I can’t see anything substantial happening until such time as the existing buildings rise in value; in the short term DIT should take additional space in office buildings at 10 year leases with tenant only breaks on five years; to ramp up capacity in post graduate training now when people need it. DIT happening at Grangegorman is entirely linked to a pick up in the value of the existing sites…..

I expressed no optimism, I passed on a statement.

Grangegorman is really worthy objective; but you feel College places are needed in the next 15 months or else there will be a major heamorage of talent…

personally, removing sub-human temporary classrooms from primary and secondary institutions would serve Ireland better than improving the lot of third level students who should be able to make do, despite being an hour or so away from their mammies

but if a significant proportion of unemployed graduates emmigrate there will be a lot fewer mammies in future years. Having a good chat with region level CEOs about their specific skills shortages over the next business cycle and designing training courses to meet those skills will ensure that the exchequer has the funds to renovate as opposed to patch repair schools over the next cycle; the primary school I went to was subsequently condemned and replaced; the conditions did no harm to my academic prospects when I went to second level.

@notjim wrote:

I expressed no optimism, I passed on a statement.

It will be interesting to see how the fatwah against development over 28m (absent an LAP) will impact on Grangegorman (Draft Dev Plan as altered by Members yesterday)?:eek:

wearnicehats
Re: Gov’ Unveils €39 Billion Capital Investment Plan (2010-2016)
personally, removing sub-human temporary classrooms from primary and secondary institutions would serve Ireland better than improving the lot of third level students who should be able to make do, despite being an hour or so away from their mammies

to be honest i reckon college standards are more important, i didnt give a crap about going into the prefabs in secondry school but the leaking roof in bolton street library and the windows that dont quite keep the water out of the studios does cause problems. lets face it how often do you have to rhyme of a poem to sell your project to a client? plus for the 1500e in fees (which is only going up) we shouldnt have to ‘make do’

@adrian5987 wrote:

to be honest i reckon college standards are more important, i didnt give a crap about going into the prefabs in secondry school but the leaking roof in bolton street library and the windows that dont quite keep the water out of the studios does cause problems. lets face it how often do you have to rhyme of a poem to sell your project to a client? plus for the 1500e in fees (which is only going up) we shouldnt have to ‘make do’

I’m sorry but you cannot write such a total car crash of a post in terms of spelling and grammar whilst putting down the importance of primary education.

We owe a fundamental right to our children to treat them properly. The education system needs to be overhauled from the bottom up, not the other way around.

@wearnicehats wrote:

I’m sorry but you cannot write such a total car crash of a post in terms of spelling and grammar whilst putting down the importance of primary education.

We owe a fundamental right to our children to treat them properly. The education system needs to be overhauled from the bottom up, not the other way around.

:p DAM STR8:o

@wearnicehats wrote:

I’m sorry but you cannot write such a total car crash of a post in terms of spelling and grammar whilst putting down the importance of primary education.

We owe a fundamental right to our children to treat them properly. The education system needs to be overhauled from the bottom up, not the other way around.

No chickens = no eggz

As someone involved in education, albeit in higher level, I amn’t sure pre-fabs are anything like the biggest or most immediate problem with Irish national and secondary education.

@notjim wrote:

As someone involved in education, albeit in higher level, I amn’t sure pre-fabs are anything like the biggest or most immediate problem with Irish national and secondary education.

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. The school system is certainly more in need of funding than a few pie in the sky and completely unnecessary infrastucture “projects” which are really just (white) elephants in the room.

Nothing odd about “amn’t”, there are two contraction: “I amn’t” and “I’m not”; I speak an Irish dialect of English, one of its characteristics, one of its defining characteristics, is the choice of the first over the second.

@wearnicehats wrote:

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.

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