"Sinead, you have just produced more insight than our elected officials, entire civil service, academia and journalists combined.
Don't let efforts to pick minor holes in this detract. This is the analysis and debate that is entirely missing right now.
Bravo."
Some additional thoughts:
1. I am from a rural community but spent 2 decades in "the city" post MBA. There is an ability in rural Ireland to spot bullshit from miles off that is entirely absent in D2/D4/D6. Spin only takes you so far.
The policy of "ever greater State (where is Stephen Kinsella these days?)" is deeply challenged when you collect the taxes to fund the policy but fail to deliver the results.
2. People see a huge split between those in Government / Gov funded NGOs / Semi States etc. with flexitime and Defined Benefit pensions and their lives. It is the single constant and substantial bone of contention in pubs and around dinner tables across rural Ireland. There is zero attempt to deliver meaningful productivity in many of these organisations and their neighbours absolutely see it on a daily basis.
3. Ideological measures at huge cost such as retrofitting (often adequate) housing to save the planet doesn't pass the bullshit test. The ESRI report says it doesn't result in much of an energy saving either, so now its so that people can eat their breakfast in their pyjamas (per Eamon Ryan). This sort of nonsense has people paying 52% tax to fund pulling double glazing out of council houses to replace it with triple glazing ... well, pulling their hair out.
4. The scariest thing I have heard (repeatedly) from Michael Martin is that it is undemocratic to give in to a minority. This is exactly the sort of thing that someone who has never been oppressed by a majority would say. A head count does not legitimise oppression, physical or economic, of a minority. Would you consider writing a piece about the "tyranny of the majority?" for him?
5. I've seen what happens when a group of individuals try and use what Michael Martin would describe as "legitimate processes" to pursue a commercial grievance against the State. A close contact has spent 20 years trying to undo the harm caused by the State to a successful aquaculture business. They have been to the Supreme Court twice and won twice (Barlow v Min). Meanwhile there is no consequence for the behaviour of the civil servants involved and the financial consequences are still uncertain. That is what a "win" looks like when you play by the rules. 20 years of their lives gone.
The farmers / hauliers etc. are right. Blockade is the option that will deliver results. The courts and the ballot box are an utter charade. I've seen that first hand.
Sinead! This is one of the best analysis of the recent Irish economic wealth story. The comparison to the Nordics is so on point. Ireland’s mismanagement of excess Corp Tax will be, as pointed out by other Irish economists lately, the greatest tragedy of this decade with our Dept of Finance (under Paschal) became obsessed with running surpluses to be bottom of the European deficit/debt tables at the expense of actually improving the services/infrastructure in the economy - albeit the ambition is there with NDP. But we are, as you say, a “premature state: a country where wealth, sovereignty, and EU membership arrived before the institutional architecture required to make use of them was built.” Therefore we have three or four MNEs contributing to increasing Govt expenditure for 10+ years now with little to show for it other than being the only country in EZ running surpluses, large (50bn) cash balances at the NTMA and two Sovereign wealth funds (24bn) we should question why we need to run those surpluses at a time of need… thanks very much for this piece.
This is great work, thank you - but I would take issue with the generalisation that protest in Ireland is primarily symbolic or an expression of values. When it comes to abortion and repeal, we absolutely did have skin in the game. The same applies to the water protests, austerity and shell to sea. There was also the short lived grey revolt in 2013, student protests against fee increases, climate, and, Im sure, many more examples.
Really interesting piece. I wouldn’t say I agree with all of it but while reading I did find myself wondering how much of our inability to solve infrastructural issues as a nation are in fact cultural?
Low expectations in public services become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Short-termism is rife but those policy measures are also generally rewarded in elections. Public discourse tends to be hijacked by NIMBYs, naysayers, or those who want to focus on blaming the government (sometimes fair) rather than focusing on trade-offs needed to solve problems.
I’ve often thought we need some sort of initiative to raise ambition levels for the nation. Like a “Notions for Ireland” project except obviously the first task would be to ban the word “notions” because that in itself is a cause of a whole host of other cultural problems…
Most cultures have low public trust. Engineering high public trust might be possible, but it will require a sort of domestic imperialism by the technocratic class that will be unpalatable to democracy. Better for low trust societies to accept that they are low trust and stick with minimal governance to keep the people from fighting to commandeer the government handouts.
The only possible solution I can see is to agree that facts, science and analysis need to come before ideology.
For example, The Irish Academy of Engineering recently produced a report that said out energy policy was based on wishful thinking. It was largely ignored. That's why we can't have nice things.
We need to appoint real expertise from the sort of men and women that build pharma and Intel plants, run huge data projects for Microsoftz etc. to the Seanad after they have enough money made and want to have a different impact. ....
Sinead, this is the most insightful analysis of the the clusterfukc commonly called Ireland that I have ever read.
It reaffirms what we all feel, on the one hand we are listening to stories of record exchequer returns every quarter followed by stories of crisis in every Government department.
I followed you on the dark place (X) many moons ago for articles like this and honestly I recognised this was your work before the name registered.
Excellent article Sinead, and thank you for writing it. Some points I had never considered and they have cleaned up my thinking a lot. You are so right that we have 'governance by Liveline' and an absence of proper planning and investment around infrastructure. It is very concerning that our justice minister took on the role he did, and that peaceful protesters were pepper-sprayed.
It frustrated me no end that some of the self-appointed leaders of the protests contended that 'all the people support us', as though all the protests were the same, as though anyone had a say in their actions, as though anyone had voted for them to do what they did. I did and do support some of the protests and their approach, and others absolutely not. I just wish more competent, decent people could put themselves forward for elected office, so we'd have more choice at the polls. Things have become so hate-filled that only the thickest-skinned would even contemplate public office. I firmly believe that TDs should be precluded from getting involved in constituency/local politics and decisions; they should be fully focused on what's in the national interest, not narrow 'my back yard' stuff.
Two points I'd make on some of the detail. The French system has definitely not yet figured out how to listen to their people; I'm not sure the 'infrastructural architecture' you reference is in place there. The people relentlessly protest and disrupt, and nothing seems to change.
In Spain, the Guardia Civil is 'is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the authority of both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence' and is more akin to the Irish army than to our Garda Síochána.
Again, thanks for such a well-written and thought-provoking piece. Applause emoji!
Many European countries have an "internal army" run by an Interior Ministry, we have neither, we have "Defence Forces", which clearly defines their role.
Thank you for a brilliant analysis and summary. These three points are very insightful:
Ireland is a node in an extraction system that siphons tax base from every country where real economic activity occurs.
Ireland is still… considerably shittier at most things than our EU peers.
The traditional Irish protest is a demonstration of values, not an exercise of power.
On the first point. The extractor used to be a nation state, Britain. Now it is a tiny number of the richest corporations on earth. These corporations are all from a nation state, the USA . But they have used us to become richer and more powerful than their own nation state and to subvert it. The new hegemony in the west is the Corporation. We are watching Orwell come to pass. We are not yet at a single entity, but the AI and surveillance capabilities mean that this is close. We should realise that we are a node in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan to transfer Hegemonic power to the richest oligarchs.
On the second point, that everything is shittier here in terms of the gifts of prosperity. Can you add an aoverseasnalysis of Norway and China and how they compare to us on this front? China has a more advanced surveillance state but the State has retained power over corporations. It has invested overseas also to extract needed inputs, but with Belt and Rosd, it seems to be more mutual. What do you think?
On the third point, protest as an expression of values not power. This is brilliant. The equivalent of this in the US hsd been the Black Lives Matter protests. In Ireland, the Gaza protest are worth analysis. They are like the fuel protests because even a token Occupied Territories Bill might offend the US hegemon. Why is this? Could it be that Ireland is one node and Israel is another in the new Hegemony? Israel has been the iron fist and Ireland the velvet glove? The Heritage plans are NOT based on traditional humanitarian values, but on a faux meritocracy where wealth underpins generational power for the elites.
Ireland is a great place to be in the top 1% earning huge salaries. In the district electoral division around Google HQ, the median income is over €100,000. If you are young and on high salary, things work for you because you are less likely to be ill or have kids. So you pay big money for rent and parking and groceries but you can afford it, and your plan is to leave in 5-10 years anyway because you are here as a person of global standard talent. The Irish tech scene is analgous to the NBA with 50% of tne very best athletes coming from overseas and there on merit.
I some respects your analysis reminds me of Varoufakis. He makes a brilliant diagnosis, but is not so strong on the treatment. What can we do? What positive steps can we take?
I visited Seoul in 2018 and was struck by how well they had done with building housing, road infrastructure, train systems, bridges. Ireland DOES do some things well. The response to Brexit as far as restructuring our ports and shipping connections away from the UK land bridge, has been quietly magnificent.
When Tallaght Hospital was built and opened, that project was done on time and in budget in 1994. Yet we have had a much different experience with the National Paediatric Hospital and people just say this ALWAYS happens. Well it didn’t. But why did we not copy and learn from the success of the Tallaght project? Was it seen as a success? Or was it failed by strategic leadership and then dishonestly analysed to avoid allocating blame for the current funding and parking infrastructure deficits that dogged it after it opened?
Fascinated with your analysis on @davidmcwilliams podcast. I moved to Ireland from the UK ten years ago. Paying health insurance, huge prices for electricity; no renewables; no broadband (then); six-figure numbers of car drivers without training, license, insurance or all three; no commuter trains; local buses were introduced the year I arrived - the list goes on. These I acquiseced to as the price to pay for the quality of life, and I recognized that my town had been improving over the 15 years previously in which I had visited it. But later I see the economic figures, I pay my taxes, I witness the election cycle, and I ask myself - what is this country who has adopted me and accepted me; what is it doing? The sense of wasted potential is harder to ignore. I find myself clinging to the smallest measure - sure the road has been resurfaced; tis great to see new houses - like minor achievements are miracles.
Your analysis succinctly summarized the problem. The country is a toddler in sweet shop and it breaks my heart.
What I found especially compelling is that it pushes beyond the usual language of growth and success and asks what any of that has actually built in social, institutional and infrastructural terms. That feels like the real question.
I’d be really interested in your thoughts on state capacity here too. If Ireland has access to this level of wealth, why does crisis, pressure and public strain still so often expose such weak institutional foundations? Is that one of the clearest signs, in your view, of the wider model you’re describing?
Great work, Sinéad. Our political system doesn't allow for visionary infrastructural planning; all decisions are beholden to managing the coalition and planning for the next election. Manifestos etc are pointless as they get diluted to LCD in coalition agreements, thus no "big ideas" can ever get support or implemented.
This in turn has spawned a coterie of politicians who are managers rather than visionaries. The last 2 significant political choices that were implemented were EI/IDA seeking FDI - hugely successful and secondly, the investment in education - our educated people are the envy of every country.
The political class (ALL of them - got and opposition) have criminally wasted the opportunity to set a valid course for the country.
It requires courage to stand up and say we need a national policy and do it, rather than deflecting and deferring to all the canals of NGOs , quangos and govt sponsored interest groups. (How much does the government spend in supporting NGOs and lobby groups? I bet the actual number will shock....)
I wont hold my breath for any meaningful change anytime soon. It's much easier to continue the status quo.
“You might then ask: is this a developed country at all? And the best answer we natives could give you is a convoluted one: that Ireland has managed to become both overdeveloped and undeveloped without ever being quite developed.”
Fintan O’Toole: ‘Is Ireland a developed country at all?’
Sinéad, this is one of the most precise diagnoses of modern Ireland I’ve read. I left in 2008 and have spent the years since working across Europe and Australia, mostly in banking and financial services, so I’ve had an extended vantage point from which to watch Ireland from the outside.
Returning recently, I was genuinely unprepared for how much the gap between the headline numbers and lived reality had widened.
Your framing of Ireland as a “premature state,” wealthy before it was institutionally ready, resonates strongly with me. From an economics perspective, what’s happened here isn’t a resource problem; it’s a deployment and governance problem. The surpluses were real. The capacity to act was absent. And crucially, no political incentive structure was ever built to change that, because the FDI model insulated successive governments from the normal consequences of institutional failure.
What I didn’t anticipate coming home was how acutely the dysfunction would hit at the family level. I have two teenagers, one finishing secondary school where there are literally no placements available in our local area, and one who navigated the CAO with relative ease only to find that accommodation is simply not available unless you’re willing to spend Monaco-level money to facilitate that dream. In the mid-90s I walked into both education and employment with a level of ease that simply does not exist for them. The rental market, graduate salaries relative to any realistic housing cost, none of it adds up for a young person trying to build a life here. Both of my children will most likely leave given the circumstances, and I find it very difficult to argue against that logic.
What troubles me most is that this isn’t cynicism on their part, it’s rational calculation. And that’s precisely your point: the gap between Ireland’s stated prosperity and its functional delivery has become so visible that even 18-year-olds can price it in.
The institutional hollowing out you describe isn’t abstract to people who’ve lived in functioning states and then come home. In Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Sydney, decisions get made. Infrastructure gets built. Systems respond. Ireland debates, defers, and distributes a cheque. The governance-by-Liveline model you identify has real costs, and those costs are now being denominated in emigration figures.
Listening to politicians on the news or in the Dáil makes for good entertainment, but I know there will not be any constructive change whilst we’re “home” for the time being. I have no intention of staying here a second beyond my children finishing university, that is for sure.
Thank you for writing this. It’s sad that it needs to be said, and sadder still how accurate it is.
Great article, Sinéad. Thank you for putting such an informative piece together.
Something you touched on that's probably worthy of it's own article is the lack of debate and plurality of opinions in the Irish media currently which in my view is now really holding us back as country.
The traditional media in Ireland that discuss such topics is so small when one thinks about it. Two radio stations (RTE and Newstalk), Two TV broadcasters (RTE and Virgin), three newspapers (Irish times, Irish Independent and Irish Examiner), all receiving government funding - yes, even the supposed independent commercial media - are all very much in line with current 'approved' thinking. Indeed, many of the people in these organisations vie for jobs as government advisors (but were previously charged with holding such government to account - see Hugh O'Connor). Minister for media Patrick O'Donovan let the mask slip last week by threatening RTE with a review of its protest coverage i.e. not getting what he paid for!
The thought of anyone reporting or writing for these media outlets questioning any aspect of our Foreign Direct Investment model (as per your article) for example makes me chuckle. I find it hard to see how we can improve things as a country without honest open debate and the sharing of ideas, both those you agree with and don't!
Repeating from Twitter:
"Sinead, you have just produced more insight than our elected officials, entire civil service, academia and journalists combined.
Don't let efforts to pick minor holes in this detract. This is the analysis and debate that is entirely missing right now.
Bravo."
Some additional thoughts:
1. I am from a rural community but spent 2 decades in "the city" post MBA. There is an ability in rural Ireland to spot bullshit from miles off that is entirely absent in D2/D4/D6. Spin only takes you so far.
The policy of "ever greater State (where is Stephen Kinsella these days?)" is deeply challenged when you collect the taxes to fund the policy but fail to deliver the results.
2. People see a huge split between those in Government / Gov funded NGOs / Semi States etc. with flexitime and Defined Benefit pensions and their lives. It is the single constant and substantial bone of contention in pubs and around dinner tables across rural Ireland. There is zero attempt to deliver meaningful productivity in many of these organisations and their neighbours absolutely see it on a daily basis.
3. Ideological measures at huge cost such as retrofitting (often adequate) housing to save the planet doesn't pass the bullshit test. The ESRI report says it doesn't result in much of an energy saving either, so now its so that people can eat their breakfast in their pyjamas (per Eamon Ryan). This sort of nonsense has people paying 52% tax to fund pulling double glazing out of council houses to replace it with triple glazing ... well, pulling their hair out.
4. The scariest thing I have heard (repeatedly) from Michael Martin is that it is undemocratic to give in to a minority. This is exactly the sort of thing that someone who has never been oppressed by a majority would say. A head count does not legitimise oppression, physical or economic, of a minority. Would you consider writing a piece about the "tyranny of the majority?" for him?
5. I've seen what happens when a group of individuals try and use what Michael Martin would describe as "legitimate processes" to pursue a commercial grievance against the State. A close contact has spent 20 years trying to undo the harm caused by the State to a successful aquaculture business. They have been to the Supreme Court twice and won twice (Barlow v Min). Meanwhile there is no consequence for the behaviour of the civil servants involved and the financial consequences are still uncertain. That is what a "win" looks like when you play by the rules. 20 years of their lives gone.
The farmers / hauliers etc. are right. Blockade is the option that will deliver results. The courts and the ballot box are an utter charade. I've seen that first hand.
Great article. You should enable paid subscriptions. I was going to pay but could not :-)
I loved this line
governance by Liveline
Sinead! This is one of the best analysis of the recent Irish economic wealth story. The comparison to the Nordics is so on point. Ireland’s mismanagement of excess Corp Tax will be, as pointed out by other Irish economists lately, the greatest tragedy of this decade with our Dept of Finance (under Paschal) became obsessed with running surpluses to be bottom of the European deficit/debt tables at the expense of actually improving the services/infrastructure in the economy - albeit the ambition is there with NDP. But we are, as you say, a “premature state: a country where wealth, sovereignty, and EU membership arrived before the institutional architecture required to make use of them was built.” Therefore we have three or four MNEs contributing to increasing Govt expenditure for 10+ years now with little to show for it other than being the only country in EZ running surpluses, large (50bn) cash balances at the NTMA and two Sovereign wealth funds (24bn) we should question why we need to run those surpluses at a time of need… thanks very much for this piece.
This is great work, thank you - but I would take issue with the generalisation that protest in Ireland is primarily symbolic or an expression of values. When it comes to abortion and repeal, we absolutely did have skin in the game. The same applies to the water protests, austerity and shell to sea. There was also the short lived grey revolt in 2013, student protests against fee increases, climate, and, Im sure, many more examples.
Really interesting piece. I wouldn’t say I agree with all of it but while reading I did find myself wondering how much of our inability to solve infrastructural issues as a nation are in fact cultural?
Low expectations in public services become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Short-termism is rife but those policy measures are also generally rewarded in elections. Public discourse tends to be hijacked by NIMBYs, naysayers, or those who want to focus on blaming the government (sometimes fair) rather than focusing on trade-offs needed to solve problems.
I’ve often thought we need some sort of initiative to raise ambition levels for the nation. Like a “Notions for Ireland” project except obviously the first task would be to ban the word “notions” because that in itself is a cause of a whole host of other cultural problems…
This is a great point, I am working on such a project for France actually! But won't go live until September, a lot of work required ☹️
Most cultures have low public trust. Engineering high public trust might be possible, but it will require a sort of domestic imperialism by the technocratic class that will be unpalatable to democracy. Better for low trust societies to accept that they are low trust and stick with minimal governance to keep the people from fighting to commandeer the government handouts.
The only possible solution I can see is to agree that facts, science and analysis need to come before ideology.
For example, The Irish Academy of Engineering recently produced a report that said out energy policy was based on wishful thinking. It was largely ignored. That's why we can't have nice things.
We need to appoint real expertise from the sort of men and women that build pharma and Intel plants, run huge data projects for Microsoftz etc. to the Seanad after they have enough money made and want to have a different impact. ....
Most poor countries do
This is sobering, then enraging. Well done.
Sinead, this is the most insightful analysis of the the clusterfukc commonly called Ireland that I have ever read.
It reaffirms what we all feel, on the one hand we are listening to stories of record exchequer returns every quarter followed by stories of crisis in every Government department.
I followed you on the dark place (X) many moons ago for articles like this and honestly I recognised this was your work before the name registered.
I'd love to hear Coalition's response to this.
A Nation Thanks You.
Excellent article Sinead, and thank you for writing it. Some points I had never considered and they have cleaned up my thinking a lot. You are so right that we have 'governance by Liveline' and an absence of proper planning and investment around infrastructure. It is very concerning that our justice minister took on the role he did, and that peaceful protesters were pepper-sprayed.
It frustrated me no end that some of the self-appointed leaders of the protests contended that 'all the people support us', as though all the protests were the same, as though anyone had a say in their actions, as though anyone had voted for them to do what they did. I did and do support some of the protests and their approach, and others absolutely not. I just wish more competent, decent people could put themselves forward for elected office, so we'd have more choice at the polls. Things have become so hate-filled that only the thickest-skinned would even contemplate public office. I firmly believe that TDs should be precluded from getting involved in constituency/local politics and decisions; they should be fully focused on what's in the national interest, not narrow 'my back yard' stuff.
Two points I'd make on some of the detail. The French system has definitely not yet figured out how to listen to their people; I'm not sure the 'infrastructural architecture' you reference is in place there. The people relentlessly protest and disrupt, and nothing seems to change.
In Spain, the Guardia Civil is 'is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the authority of both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence' and is more akin to the Irish army than to our Garda Síochána.
Again, thanks for such a well-written and thought-provoking piece. Applause emoji!
Many European countries have an "internal army" run by an Interior Ministry, we have neither, we have "Defence Forces", which clearly defines their role.
Thank you for a brilliant analysis and summary. These three points are very insightful:
Ireland is a node in an extraction system that siphons tax base from every country where real economic activity occurs.
Ireland is still… considerably shittier at most things than our EU peers.
The traditional Irish protest is a demonstration of values, not an exercise of power.
On the first point. The extractor used to be a nation state, Britain. Now it is a tiny number of the richest corporations on earth. These corporations are all from a nation state, the USA . But they have used us to become richer and more powerful than their own nation state and to subvert it. The new hegemony in the west is the Corporation. We are watching Orwell come to pass. We are not yet at a single entity, but the AI and surveillance capabilities mean that this is close. We should realise that we are a node in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan to transfer Hegemonic power to the richest oligarchs.
On the second point, that everything is shittier here in terms of the gifts of prosperity. Can you add an aoverseasnalysis of Norway and China and how they compare to us on this front? China has a more advanced surveillance state but the State has retained power over corporations. It has invested overseas also to extract needed inputs, but with Belt and Rosd, it seems to be more mutual. What do you think?
On the third point, protest as an expression of values not power. This is brilliant. The equivalent of this in the US hsd been the Black Lives Matter protests. In Ireland, the Gaza protest are worth analysis. They are like the fuel protests because even a token Occupied Territories Bill might offend the US hegemon. Why is this? Could it be that Ireland is one node and Israel is another in the new Hegemony? Israel has been the iron fist and Ireland the velvet glove? The Heritage plans are NOT based on traditional humanitarian values, but on a faux meritocracy where wealth underpins generational power for the elites.
Ireland is a great place to be in the top 1% earning huge salaries. In the district electoral division around Google HQ, the median income is over €100,000. If you are young and on high salary, things work for you because you are less likely to be ill or have kids. So you pay big money for rent and parking and groceries but you can afford it, and your plan is to leave in 5-10 years anyway because you are here as a person of global standard talent. The Irish tech scene is analgous to the NBA with 50% of tne very best athletes coming from overseas and there on merit.
I some respects your analysis reminds me of Varoufakis. He makes a brilliant diagnosis, but is not so strong on the treatment. What can we do? What positive steps can we take?
I visited Seoul in 2018 and was struck by how well they had done with building housing, road infrastructure, train systems, bridges. Ireland DOES do some things well. The response to Brexit as far as restructuring our ports and shipping connections away from the UK land bridge, has been quietly magnificent.
When Tallaght Hospital was built and opened, that project was done on time and in budget in 1994. Yet we have had a much different experience with the National Paediatric Hospital and people just say this ALWAYS happens. Well it didn’t. But why did we not copy and learn from the success of the Tallaght project? Was it seen as a success? Or was it failed by strategic leadership and then dishonestly analysed to avoid allocating blame for the current funding and parking infrastructure deficits that dogged it after it opened?
So many more thngs to say.
Absolutely superb analysis. Thank you for your time in doing this.
Fascinated with your analysis on @davidmcwilliams podcast. I moved to Ireland from the UK ten years ago. Paying health insurance, huge prices for electricity; no renewables; no broadband (then); six-figure numbers of car drivers without training, license, insurance or all three; no commuter trains; local buses were introduced the year I arrived - the list goes on. These I acquiseced to as the price to pay for the quality of life, and I recognized that my town had been improving over the 15 years previously in which I had visited it. But later I see the economic figures, I pay my taxes, I witness the election cycle, and I ask myself - what is this country who has adopted me and accepted me; what is it doing? The sense of wasted potential is harder to ignore. I find myself clinging to the smallest measure - sure the road has been resurfaced; tis great to see new houses - like minor achievements are miracles.
Your analysis succinctly summarized the problem. The country is a toddler in sweet shop and it breaks my heart.
This is a damn good article.
What I found especially compelling is that it pushes beyond the usual language of growth and success and asks what any of that has actually built in social, institutional and infrastructural terms. That feels like the real question.
I’d be really interested in your thoughts on state capacity here too. If Ireland has access to this level of wealth, why does crisis, pressure and public strain still so often expose such weak institutional foundations? Is that one of the clearest signs, in your view, of the wider model you’re describing?
Great work, Sinéad. Our political system doesn't allow for visionary infrastructural planning; all decisions are beholden to managing the coalition and planning for the next election. Manifestos etc are pointless as they get diluted to LCD in coalition agreements, thus no "big ideas" can ever get support or implemented.
This in turn has spawned a coterie of politicians who are managers rather than visionaries. The last 2 significant political choices that were implemented were EI/IDA seeking FDI - hugely successful and secondly, the investment in education - our educated people are the envy of every country.
The political class (ALL of them - got and opposition) have criminally wasted the opportunity to set a valid course for the country.
It requires courage to stand up and say we need a national policy and do it, rather than deflecting and deferring to all the canals of NGOs , quangos and govt sponsored interest groups. (How much does the government spend in supporting NGOs and lobby groups? I bet the actual number will shock....)
I wont hold my breath for any meaningful change anytime soon. It's much easier to continue the status quo.
Great piece Sinéad. As Fintan O’Toole wrote:
“You might then ask: is this a developed country at all? And the best answer we natives could give you is a convoluted one: that Ireland has managed to become both overdeveloped and undeveloped without ever being quite developed.”
Fintan O’Toole: ‘Is Ireland a developed country at all?’
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2022/07/09/fintan-otoole-ireland-has-managed-to-become-both-overdeveloped-and-undeveloped-without-ever-being-quite-developed/
Sinéad, this is one of the most precise diagnoses of modern Ireland I’ve read. I left in 2008 and have spent the years since working across Europe and Australia, mostly in banking and financial services, so I’ve had an extended vantage point from which to watch Ireland from the outside.
Returning recently, I was genuinely unprepared for how much the gap between the headline numbers and lived reality had widened.
Your framing of Ireland as a “premature state,” wealthy before it was institutionally ready, resonates strongly with me. From an economics perspective, what’s happened here isn’t a resource problem; it’s a deployment and governance problem. The surpluses were real. The capacity to act was absent. And crucially, no political incentive structure was ever built to change that, because the FDI model insulated successive governments from the normal consequences of institutional failure.
What I didn’t anticipate coming home was how acutely the dysfunction would hit at the family level. I have two teenagers, one finishing secondary school where there are literally no placements available in our local area, and one who navigated the CAO with relative ease only to find that accommodation is simply not available unless you’re willing to spend Monaco-level money to facilitate that dream. In the mid-90s I walked into both education and employment with a level of ease that simply does not exist for them. The rental market, graduate salaries relative to any realistic housing cost, none of it adds up for a young person trying to build a life here. Both of my children will most likely leave given the circumstances, and I find it very difficult to argue against that logic.
What troubles me most is that this isn’t cynicism on their part, it’s rational calculation. And that’s precisely your point: the gap between Ireland’s stated prosperity and its functional delivery has become so visible that even 18-year-olds can price it in.
The institutional hollowing out you describe isn’t abstract to people who’ve lived in functioning states and then come home. In Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Sydney, decisions get made. Infrastructure gets built. Systems respond. Ireland debates, defers, and distributes a cheque. The governance-by-Liveline model you identify has real costs, and those costs are now being denominated in emigration figures.
Listening to politicians on the news or in the Dáil makes for good entertainment, but I know there will not be any constructive change whilst we’re “home” for the time being. I have no intention of staying here a second beyond my children finishing university, that is for sure.
Thank you for writing this. It’s sad that it needs to be said, and sadder still how accurate it is.
Great article, Sinéad. Thank you for putting such an informative piece together.
Something you touched on that's probably worthy of it's own article is the lack of debate and plurality of opinions in the Irish media currently which in my view is now really holding us back as country.
The traditional media in Ireland that discuss such topics is so small when one thinks about it. Two radio stations (RTE and Newstalk), Two TV broadcasters (RTE and Virgin), three newspapers (Irish times, Irish Independent and Irish Examiner), all receiving government funding - yes, even the supposed independent commercial media - are all very much in line with current 'approved' thinking. Indeed, many of the people in these organisations vie for jobs as government advisors (but were previously charged with holding such government to account - see Hugh O'Connor). Minister for media Patrick O'Donovan let the mask slip last week by threatening RTE with a review of its protest coverage i.e. not getting what he paid for!
The thought of anyone reporting or writing for these media outlets questioning any aspect of our Foreign Direct Investment model (as per your article) for example makes me chuckle. I find it hard to see how we can improve things as a country without honest open debate and the sharing of ideas, both those you agree with and don't!