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Colm McCarthy Opinion Were there no adults in the room when they drew up the National Development Plan?

A depressing litany of cost overruns on major projects has damaged the credibility of public-capital spending in Ireland. In an unconscious acknowledgement, Monday’s relaunch of the National Development Plan (NDP) was broadcast from Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh stadium — where the redevelopment cost €110m, versus the budgeted figure of €70m.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Energy crisis: Three winter wishes to keep us all switched on

Disruptions to electricity supply over the winter peak are threatened but not inevitable according to reports from two State bodies . If wind farm output improves after the recent calm spell, if two gas-fired stations currently out of action are restored, and if Great Britain has spare power to export over the interconnectors, all will be well. The Government’s policy is to hope, fervently, for a hat-trick of these happy outcomes.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Without fossil fuels, can we really hope to stop the lamps going out all over Europe?

Last Monday week, during a brief period of tight electricity supply in Great Britain, the import capacity on Ireland’s two interconnectors was zero — no power was available on either the link from Scotland to Northern Ireland, or on the interconnector into north county Dublin from Wales.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Paying the piper to play big project tune

The economy is recovering well, but hardly a day passes without expansive announcements of more spending or further protection from tax burdens.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Leaving all the tough decisions for a later day

In November 2018, when the Yellow Vest protesters took to the streets of France, their immediate grievance concerned a planned increase in diesel tax of 6.5c per litre, adding to the prevailing forecourt price of €1.45. The increase, designed to curb carbon emissions, would have been a little over 4pc on a small portion of household spending, and the overall French inflation rate, around 1.5pc at the time, would barely have budged.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Politicians are paralysed by fear of property owners’ revolt

Affordability is the only issue in housing policy. The number of units built, for purchase or for rent, whether by public authorities or by private sector developers, is irrelevant. Policy targets expressed in units to be constructed are an evasion.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Capital programme is always the fall guy when times get tough

Too rapid a build-up in S tate capital spending has often preceded an abrupt, and pro-cyclical, cutback a few years later. There is a risk that this damaging pattern is playing out again.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Keeping the lights on this winter means facing hard truths

Serious decisions can no longer be avoided about Irish energy policy, yet some people are beginning to look unserious, dodging the column.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Plenty of land, but not enough political will

Unaffordable housing is a complex problem. It has been decades in the making and there are no one-shot solutions.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion High-speed rail lines for this island will soon hit the buffers  

Nichola Mallon of the SDLP is Northern Ireland’s minister for infrastructure. Her opposite number in the Republic is Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, and they jointly announced on July 27 the recruitment of the engineers Ove Arup to conduct a review of the feasibility of high-speed rail lines in Ireland.

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Crisis is looming for elderly renters on poor pensions 

Ensuring decent living standards in retirement needs adequate pensions, but it also needs affordable housing. In a country where most people facing retirement, until recently, could expect to have mortgages paid off and no more outgoings for accommodation, the trends in housing tenure are ominous. A society with a looming generation of elderly renters on poor pensions is not a happy prospect. 

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Boris is the clear loser in his Brexit blame game

Britain’s popular press has been confusing solutions with problems on two fronts over the last week.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Government takes a gamble with risky budget strategy

The G overnment has, in the Summer Economic Statement, chosen a riskier budget strategy than had been planned, coated in protestations of caution. Rhetoric can be an innocent accessory to policy, an explanation of the technical in the vernacular. 

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Winds of change risk power blackouts across the State

In June 2018, the Government issued a statement of policy on data centres, committing to “align enterprise electricity demand with generation capacity and transmission planning”.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Vaccine passport, like a driving licence, is for the public’s safety

Signs of an early economic upswing are being overshadowed by the rapid propagation of the Delta variant.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion In virus versus vaccine, the Delta variant is winning in the UK

At their press conference on June 10, Nphet’s experts, regularly accused of excessive caution, were notably optimistic about the progress of disease containment.

Noise review: A fascinating study of the flaws in our decision-making powers

Noise

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Colm McCarthy Opinion The Irish State cannot afford to be a pop-up insurance company indefinitely

When there are wrongs to be righted, democracies can sometimes go populist. Governments are tempted to act like pop-up insurance companies, compensating those affected by every misfortune which strikes, including historical injustices, regardless of legal liability and without adjudication by the courts.

Obituary: Peter Neary, economist at UCD and Oxford

Rarely involved in controversies about policy and hence not widely known to the public, Peter Neary was regarded by his colleagues as the outstanding Irish economist of his generation and one of the few to have established a truly worldwide reputation.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion There is a chilling sense of deja vu with the Delta variant

No durable economic recovery is likely until the virus has been suppressed, and exceptional monetary and budget measures will be in place until then.

Colm McCarthy Opinion Rash spending, not borrowing, is the problem

Emergency measures get withdrawn when the emergency ends. Government interventions, costly to the State’s finances, undertaken in extreme circumstances and designed in a hurry, were never intended to be sustained.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion UK is not alone in its Covid failures

New cases, hospitalisations and deaths from the virus have all risen somewhat in the UK over the last week. Given the rapid roll-out of vaccination, the best in Europe, this should not have been happening. The reason seems to be the so-called Indian variant, more infectious and more widespread in Britain, and some experts are worried the government may be forced to pause, or even reverse, the lifting of restrictions.  

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Our broken planning system holds development to ransom 

A cheese plant in Kilkenny or a housing development in the Dublin suburbs cannot proceed without planning permission. Permission can be denied by decision of the planning experts at the local authority or at An Bord Pleanála. It can also be withheld indefinitely to the point where the project is placed in jeopardy despite positive verdicts from both, through the persistence of objectors through the courts.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion It’s time to consider charging drivers for using urban roads

Last week’s report from the OECD, the Paris-based think-tank for developed countries, furnished a checklist of environmental policy decisions bottled by Irish governments over the years, usually with all-party agreement.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Housing crisis and climate change will be the revenge of the Millennials at the next general election

Any credible strategy needs clear targets and specific measures designed to achieve them. Two of the great challenges for modern Ireland are climate change and unaffordable housing.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Reunification will ask taxing questions of our republic 

Brexit and the fallout over the Northern Ireland protocol have reminded everyone  the Good Friday Agreement promises, or threatens, a process of constitutional change with destabilising potential.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion If you are not explaining it properly, then you are losing

When a policy cannot be explained to a receptive audience, the problem is most likely the policy itself rather than the communications strategy. Voluntary adherence to the recommended public health measures, and willingness to accept vaccination when offered, will be critical determinants of this country’s success or failure in containing the pandemic and getting people back to work.  

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Why ‘abundance of caution’ undermines vaccine strategy

When a policy is unclear about its targets and about the measures chosen to achi eve them, no amount of communications effort can furnish the missing clarity.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion Lockdown fatigue is real and should be taken into account

Twice during 2020, premature exits from lockdowns in European countries, designed to rescue economic activity and to restore personal freedoms, achieved neither objective. Instead, they have weakened public compliance.

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Colm McCarthy Opinion What are the chances of another surge?

Extra public health restrictions, including curfews and school closures, are being imposed in France, Germany, Italy and in several other EU countries in response to a new surge in infections.