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- wearnicehats wrote:Latecomers will not gain access until the morning coffee break €]
ah we’re not so bad wearnicehats 😉 The auditorium is however relatively small, and no different to any other event, ensuring that proceedings are free from interuption once underway is in the interest of both those attending & speaking.
Speaking of the aforementioned James Doyle, a selection of his work:
I’m sure Michael O’Leary would build them an airport, for say – exclusive – long haul flights into China
Looking at the COSCO investment in Pireaus they seem a lot happier leveraging existing facilities and then investment from base infrastructure.
However their history in other continents like Africa may suggest to some that they do not integrate well and tend to import their own labour force.
Everyone does in Africa; the real challenge for many African countries is the development of high skilled professionals in the natural resources sector; and some others it is corruption and in some places you got to admire the Chinese for side stepping the corruption and skills shortages to deliver planning gain in the form of new hospitals etc.-
Ireland is a country that’s already found it difficult to decide between Boston and Berlin.
Now we can add Beijing to make it a three way split.When bond markets close you got to go the holder of the World’s largest foreign reserves with a rational business case; by all means fund Athlone IT to develop courses to feed a project like this but compare the Dublin Galway rail line to what is being built in China; they would be the ones laughing at us. However they would one would hope look at the fantastic success E-Bay has had here as an e-commerce hub and develop an improved model incorporating a business to business version complete with acres and acres of showrooms for their dramatically successful exporters.
Airport and population being key
@reddy wrote:
There’re a few xenophobic threads burgeoning on this online, mostly around worries that the jobs created and provided will be solely for Chinese and the creation of a ghetto community isolated and unintegrated.
Hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry of Eclectica was on Newsnight last night and he asked a very pertinent question; why would a Chinese company locate in the West when they can employ one of their 12m annual graduates who typically work for $3,000us p.a. in the UK graduates must pay £9k or c$14k for each year they spend in university.
I think assertions that the jobs would solely for Chinese nationals are misplaced for now; at start up they would employ a lot of locals but as they established strongh management systems that over time they would hire from home.
My fears on this are more in line with Keatings in the last post; serious chinese business people have been doing high value business in Western markets for years they would make their approach in a manner that would not have anyone knowing the origin of the investment. With the right site the idea could work but it needs an airport and a large local population; Athlone has neither.
If I were in your position I would probably make the same arguments Tayto laid out; but wind the clock back14 years and then look at more of the costs of the Dick Roche style one off housing bonanza when allowed only in some local authorities prior to its nationwide blitzkreig of the mid naughties.
@simon.d wrote:
The houses are quite a distance apart (i.e. 75m or so), would that still be considered the same site?
Would it be looked on like a greenfield site? The farmhouse itself is around 200 years old, made of clay of the lobby entry form and in very good condition..
Sounds like a pleasant vernacular dwelling; little celebrated but clearly of local social interest.
@simon.d wrote:
It’d be a shame to let it rot… Do planners take into account the heritage value of old buildings when granting permissions?
Yip the planners at the time and with Dick Roche’s planning regime were very happy to let old buildings rot so that McMansions could replace them as the primary dwelling on the curtilage.
Just to be clear I hope you do get the restore the farmhouse and are very happy in it 😉
The rationale behind the project seems very sound for a country that is 7/8 timezones from EU and 12 from the East Coast of the US in addition to having serious infrastructural constraints considering their trading prowess. The ability to market ones goods in one place only 1-2 hours flight time from the Worlds largest market and at very competitive tax rates to act as a fiscal laundromat is genius; Singapore of the North.
Why one would want to put a project of this scale so far from an airport is another story; run right this would be beside a major airport, sea port and would be on a site of 1,000 acres with a masterplan rolling out buildings of 6-25 storeys in an area subject to local oversight but exempt from planning within a pre agreed envelope of macros agreed by all key stakeholders.
Why I am suspicious is that the Asian (HK & Singapore) development scene is certainly the most advanced on the planet and none of the usual suspects are listed in the article.
I would be very surprised if he were to talk to you as he is instructed by the RIAI and may be conflicted from talking to you. It is fair to say that the Act is an ill considered piece of legislation in that it did not deliver a viable and workable set of rules to govern an important profession.
To concentrate on a potential breach of an EU directive misses the point of why the system as drafted is not fit for purpose to represent a watershed for all existing market contributors; the intention of the legislation was to regulate the profession; to do that it needed to deal with 5 classes of individuals
1. FRIAI
2. MRIAI
3. Those with recognised degrees but not MRIAI
4. Students of recognised courses
5. Those with extensive relevant experience who in other systems would become ARIAI following an assessment of competenceI would concentrate your efforts on clases 3 – 5; should you highlight the deficiencies in the manner that the legislation deals with those three classes you will win the PR battle and possibly legally if the legislation were to be challenged through the courts. This legislation needed to be right; it still does.
Sounds like my rants against Connaught Group when their shares crumpled during the summer; are you sure you aren’t / weren’t some form of creditor?
In my limited experience of construction there were always weekly meetings which seemed more like the Somme than anything else where project managers and architects from each side argued everything; and then some.
The opinion is private property and as such the only warrantee that is ever offered with a reasoned opinion is that the author’s reputation may suffer damage if it were widely distributed and the opinion was not confirmed in a subsequent judgement when put to trial. An opinion is generally that of advocate as opposed to independent expert. That said Gerard Hogan is a well respected Senior Council; I’d look very carefully at the caveats which will be works of art.
I also want to add to VCA’s comments on this; you have moved a long way from taking a literal interpretation of a single piece of legislation which was contradicted another.
Unlike so many people who simply act hard done by you have worked hard to take a position which seeks to work to my mond what is a FAIR consensus; I strongly hope that post election the significant injustice of the way that a barrier of €10k that was put up against those with knowledge skills and experience to secure recognition will be righted by the new government. If the RIAI had any sense they would seriously look at their responsibilities to wider society and their duty to provide the profession the best possible education system for those who secure either a recognised qualification or say 10 years experience; not farm it out to a third party who no-one has heard of outside the state; or inside the state typically either. Instead of CPD costing serious money they should make use of the vast body of CPD gpoing elsewhere and provide access to webinars etc.
They need to hire someone to advise them what to do about the many who graduated from approved courses and need to secure or complete part 3 to emmigrate. It seems to be a uniquely Irish approach not to secure professsional qualification in the shortest possible timeframe; I worked with 2 colleagues in Dublin who if in the UK would have certainly qualified in 2 years in their field; 6.5 years later they passed first time. But make no mistake the quality of advice they provided their clients pre qualification was a lot higher than many post qualified people in the UK with 10 years experience.
Lets be honest about Nama it is a necessary evil as probably the best of a list of very bad solutions to what is a situation that has been created by a series of political and regulatory failures only matched by Iceland.
In the context of a bank regulatory regime that did nothing; a political establishment under Dick Roche and Martin Cullen that proudly declared that they were removing blockages from the development system as the bubble grew ever more inflated.
Then we come to the universal guarantee on deposits which enabled Anglo to keep deluding themselves but not capital markets by attracting depositers whilst bond markets were closed to them; a government that guaranteed their only funding source but allowed senior directors act as though it were a private concern and inflict more damage when even secure economies like Germany and the US were in freefall.
Then the bonds of Anglo are sacrosanct and must be repaid at 100% of initial value despite them being bought by specialist distressed bond funds at very steep discounts. Even though this strategy places the guarantor in this case a government at risk of insolvency without an EU bail out.
If the Nama approach were replicated across the bond holdings of failed property banks such as Anglo and INBS who were clearly overtrading and had no diversification beyond real estate; with mopre room to move on the deficit then maybe the total hysteria in financial markets surrounding Irish sovereign debt might subside.
When one speaks of Namaberg trials one does not talk of Nama being the problem, it is the chosen solution to the problem and will over time allow the better quality assets work out.
Namaberg would be doing what Iceland has done and conducting highly publicised trials of the regulators and politicians that got them into a mess that was easy to see building and should have been resolved at least two years earlier; if the politicians who caused this mess like McCreevy, Cowen, Cullen and Roche get away with destroying the nation without censure then you can forget Ireland getting its reputation back for a very long time.
With all of the above it must be gauling to say you can’t practice your profession when the government regulating has completely destroyed your industry. I have disagreed with you in the past on the need for regulation but when you look at the bigger picture and your willingness to go down the CPD route, the barrier errected to your entry to be fairly examined at a fair price shows just how easy it is for vested interests to gunther fairness in Ireland.
Because when you are forced to emmigrate it sounds like you qualified in the UK and not escaping Ireland after the Namaberg trials!!
What we are completely ignoring is that despite the economic misery of the past two years this country has been undergoing a baby boom. And babies do not stay babies forever. We are going to require a whole swath of new infrastructure in a very short time
. The early stages of depressions usually involve baby booms as women who were too busy in previous years with their careers decide to seize the opportunity; much of the favourable demographics of 1997-2005 co-incided with the graduates who were born towards the begining of the last severe downturn getting their primary or second degress.
The gist of that is all sound but to be fair , the Dept Education have put a half-decent, somewhat resourced,strategic team together in Tullamore who would appear to be well aware of demographic pressures, appropriate new build allocation etc in my limited dealings with them.- I would imagine their work is stymied at every turn by parish pump interference
The UK for many years a department headed by the First Secretary for State was responsible for all their built environment needs; after being ditched by New Labour it is being reformulated following a research paper done by Phillip Green the Topshop entrepreneur that a centralised property team could shave up to 40% off their overheads. Given the need for fiscal discipline a centralised function prevents the FF approach to the distribution of projects to ensure thqat objective criteria are not sabotaged for political expediency.
Clearly right across the public sector there will be a number of existing facilities where replacement will be cheaper over a 10 year period than dealing with disrepair and obselecence issues, Education is a very good place to start.
Were there any contractors you thought had a better touch?
As someone looking from the built product point of view Pierse did good work.
Building schools and more pertinently third level teaching space makes a lot of sense; clearly if a rationale can be shown that energy savings etc will over 10-20 years recoup a lot of the cost and or reduce sick leave in teraching staff where dampness causes sickness and higher relief teaching costs then it makes a lot of sense. You got to love Government policy a Motorway to Tuam and the kids along it in prefabs you wouldn’t stick a poodle in.
PVC King still advocates his Luas line idea yet it is fundamentally flawed because there is no roadspace for it. The Luas Green Line could only be built because the Harcourt St. line hadn’t been touched and the Luas Red Line was only possible because CIÉ had set aside land around Tallaght for an abandoned rail project. Similarly, the Luas D line to Broombridge is only possible because it’s using the trackbed of the Broadstone rail line. No such space exists on the Northside for a Luas line to the airport. Therefore we have to go underground and therefore we opt for Metro North.The Red Line operates perfectly well between St James Hospital and the Point Depot; it even does so crossing many far busier roads than the linked Luas would need to once DCC did their bit on working withv Dublin Bus to give back OCS and College Green. You will note if you bothyer to read back through the thread that the problem of Phibsboro and a tunnel being required at that location is acknowledged. Critically the length of tunnel to resolve that issue would be hundreds of yards and not kilometers with complex underground stations.
Given that it is the RPA who is responsible for both Luas and Metro, don’t you think they would’ve come up with a Luas line plan if it was worthwhile? CIÉ proposed a spur to the line at Malahide to the airport as an alternative to Metro North as they are in the business of expanding Iarnród Éireann and DART. The RPA are in the business of expanding Luas and yet they aren’t proposing a Luas line to the airport. That ought to tell you something PVC. When even the agency whose raison d’etre is to develop Luas services isn’t proposing one to the airport you know it isn’t an option.
No the RPA are not competent; look at their delivery of phase 1 Luas; and their proposal to move a railway order for Metro West in the full knowledge it will not be built for at least 15 years. In the boom such mistakes were affordable; the party is over…..
You’re also mistaken when you say it’s “over-specified”. On the contrary, Metro North is quite spartan – the RPA have straightened out the route, standardised and simplified station design and adopted cheaper construction techniques from the Madrid Metro in order to make this project even more cost-effective. An over-specced Metro would be one proposing chandeliers for stations and marble tiling for the tunnels.
When assessed on a population catchment basis it is vastly over-specified; digging kilometers of tunnels and expensive underground stations to serve a largest town of sub 30,000 is ludicrous when compared to Tallaght with a population of close to 100,000 very well served by Luas.
However, I welcome the fact that even you have dropped the ridiculous €5 billion figure as the total cost of the whole project. This nonsensical figure was made up with no attendant justification by Frank McDonald and its great to see people are now realising that MN will cost quite a bit less than that. The fall in the cost of Metro boosts the cost-benefit ratios even further and makes the project ever more compelling.
We don’t know what it will cost; but we do know the demand analysis is complete fiction; even at €3bn it adds at todays rates over €220m a year in debt servicing costs at the Risk Free Rate. On marketwatch this evwening it was said that Ireland deserves a credit rating equivelent to Greece.
There will be an election very very soon; the next government will have their Pappendreou moment and Metro North will be binned just a swiftly as the current government who have an unprecendented voter intention ratio of less than a quarter of the electorate; there is clearly a gradual awakening to the sheer chaos that big ticket thinking has brought upon the nation. As a people the Irish were once so good at living within their means and didn’t get shafted by exotic financing packages. Back to basics get the deficit down, get people back to work and leverage trading opportunites with the emerging economies.
But when the markets lose all faith in a government bond rates balloon; sounds familier….
The compression in UK 10 year yields since 06 May has been impressive.
Benefits in public transport projects are always positive externalities – not recoupable by a private investor
You can’t bank externalities or pay loans with them. I’m still waiting to see the 150% return to the exchequer laid out; redacted development levies; hmmmm: confidence inspiring?
I’m not sure how you picked that up. Metro West is excluded from the Base Case ‘Do minimum’ and ‘Do something’ scenarios. (see Table 4.2 on pg. 53). Metro West doesn’t seem to make sense and I doubt it will be built.
The original projections INCLUDING Metro West were 35m pax base case; the revised base case is 36.5m pax. Even their own figures don’t stack up.
Whilst CDS spreads are mounting; it is a fair statement to say that the rest of Europe is looking at Ireland, scratching their heads and asking how can such an incompetant government still be peddling Metro type projects that there is no money to pay for and still be in power. I strongly hope that when gombeen back benchers resign the whip over their hospital being closed that the opposition act in the national interest and ensure there is an election.
Frank I’ve read through sections of the report and according to its proponents it delivers an IRR of 9.1% p.a; please explain why with such an impressive IRR it needs any public investment at all?
It also confirms that the base case relies upon Metro West in its base case calculations despite the fact that Metro West is off the agenda. I don’t buy the study in any shape of form.
Apply the same set of criteria for the Dublin region and spread the limited growth the next decade will display into all development corridors as opposed to assuming it will magically cram into the MN catchment and the sheer lunacy of the project becomes very clear.
Don’t listen to those who would in its absence be seeking new roles or people like Denouncer who think the population of Swords is 50,000 and that the best way to develop a bus service is to spend the few funds available on a project that will cost €150m p.a. into the foreseable future without reducing the debt pile of €3bn it has created.
€750m to deliver the now reduced route as Luas makes perfect sense; in 10 years if it is crammed then build underground Luas to meet IC from DCU. in the interim reserve a land take between the M1 Airport junction and the Northern line to build an express busway to connect with Dart; that could be delivered in less than 2 years, planning, construction the lot.
