Celtic tiger ceases to roar
The trend was well established but what a shock to read the blunt admission from the ERSI quarterly bulletin:
Taoiseach Brian Cowen warned last night that pay restraint is on the cards and that is no more popular in ROI than in the UK. How does the UK compare? In his March budget the chancellor cut his growth forecast for 2008 to 1.75%-2.25%, well below the 2.5%-3% predicted in last year’s Budget. The latest forecast from the CBI earlier this month balked at forecasting a recession. It cut its forecast for growth in 2009 from 1.7 per cent to 1.3 per cent, which would be the lowest rate since 1992.
So anyone who expects an investment bonanza in NI from either GB or the Republic shouldn’t hold their breath.
Ah, for those sweet days in Angola, when life was simple.
Perhaps it is time for an taoiseach to tell it straight up and down and let the people call it and let the people be damned either way.
It looks like the opportunity for a ‘peace dividend’ for NI was well-and-truly squandered. It’s a bad joke that it took NI’s politicians 14 years to get from the IRA ceasefire to exactly nowhere. Ah, the luxury of being a ‘kept’ woman.
What do you want?
NI has to take responsibility for it’s own economy. Crack on, make it what you will.
But the pitch is flat sir and we could only win if playing downhill with the wind at our backs as is our right and your responsibility.
It’s fair to say that after the global credit binge of the last 2-3 years there is going to be a period of retraction. Thats fair enough.
Of course the problem in NI is we may have individually ploughed ourselves into levels if indebtedness that we fall in on us for a while.
But lets see the any crash as an opportunity and not a crisis, or more particularly and excuse to excuse a lack of ambition.
What do you want?
NI has to take responsibility for it’s own economy. Crack on, make it what you will.
But the pitch is flat sir and we could only win if playing downhill with the wind at our backs as is our right and your responsibility.
It’s fair to say that after the global credit binge of the last 2-3 years there is going to be a period of retraction. Thats fair enough.
Of course the problem in NI is we may have individually ploughed ourselves into levels if indebtedness that will fall in on us for a while.
But lets see the any crash as an opportunity and not a crisis, or more particularly and excuse to excuse a lack of ambition.
Was listening to newstalk ( see http://www.newstalk.ie )in Belfast earlier today. There was a guy on the George Hook show with some interesting thoughts on how Ireland as a whole should be developed in the future. 4 major cities in the Republic Dublin Cork Waterford and Galway with a massive corridor of infrastructure stretching from Larne to Cork. Seemed like a good idea to me. One where everyone on this island might benifit from the contruction boom it could create.
“a massive corridor of infrastructure stretching from Larne to Cork”
??????!?!!!!!??!??!
“… a massive corridor of infrastructure stretching from Larne to Cork …”
I drive the Cork-Waterford road everyday. Not bad, by any means – a bit windey in parts – but certainly not a “massive orridor of infrastructure” (though the estury bridge at Youghal is very quaint, and probably cost a lot).
On the other hand, I drive from Cork to Mayo quite often as well … now Limerick/Ennis (which oddly didn’t appear on your list), that’s “a massive corridor of infrastructure”!
Celtic Snow Leopard?
Oilifear,
He was talking about developing a massive corridor in the future not claiming that there is one now.
The ennis limerick railway is open and the rest is reopening and all the way to sligo. The large dual carriageway road is part of a major plan for the west.
Since the British couldn’t care less about the part of Ireland they control i suppose we (in the republic) are going to have to pay for the relaying of the Sligo Eniskillen and Eniskillen Derry lines so we can have a round-Ireland rail circuit plus the enlarging of the N16 or A4 as its its called on the northeast side of said border. These rail routes were closed thanks to the short-sightedness of unionism. NI is like a black hole and parts of the republic that are near it suffer more the closer they are to it. Cross border bodies that can’t be constantly blocked by unionism by being made compulsory on an all Ireland basis could help move things in the right direction. Look where separate agendas have brought us. Hell they couldn’t even get funding for Derry airport without the irish government offering funding. What does the union do except keep all the irish (nationalists and unionists included) fighting among themselves. A divided ireland will always be a flawed Ireland infrastructurally or politically.
manichaeism – ah – makes more sense.
hotdogx, throwing blame at the British government and unionists for the sorry state of train services in Ulster doesn’t go very far to explain where Dublin and Cork trams went, local light rail in Cork, Kerry, Clare, West Galway, or heavy rail along from Limerick to Sligo. It doesn’t explain why I have to drive a windey road from Cork to Waterford – and not take the train along tracks that once existed – or why, when driving in the opposite direction, I pass under viaducts in west Cork that no long carry traffic.
Road infrastructure is a different story. Irish road infrastructure has been infamously poor for centuries. But, can we say today that we find ourselves lucky to no longer depend on “coasters” (sea vessels that travelled between the coastal cities when it was easier to sail from Galway to Cork or Belfast to Waterford rather than travel by road)? OK, we have €7 busses from Cork to Dublin, but flying is still a feasibly option against driving … and certainly beats the train, in my book, for what quite often is the same price.