“Could we do Ardnacrusha now?”
You hear the question posed in political circles by people despairing over the State’s apparent inability to make sufficient, timely progress on providing the infrastructure needed to enable society to progress and citizens to flourish. Another way of putting it: can the modern Irish State do big projects any more?
A century ago, only a few years after the War of Independence and the Civil War, the fledgling Free State – with a cabinet consisting largely of men in their 30s and 40s, no experience of government and almost no money – was able to conceive and execute the Ardnacrusha scheme. It cost nearly a fifth of the entire national budget and would supply most of the country’s electricity needs, enabling the electrification that raised living standards everywhere.
Imagine trying to do that now.
As it happens, 100 years ago this month, the Dáil was debating the legislation that set up the Shannon scheme. There was some opposition to it. Some TDs wondered if the people whose land was being acquired compulsorily would be adequately compensated. Others thought the scheme was too big, or too expensive. Some wanted a series of small hydroelectric schemes, rather than one big one. Michael Heffernan, leader of the Farmers’ Party, was in favour, he said, of “a Shannon scheme ... not the Shannon scheme.”
But what is clear from the debates and from the wider history of the time is that there was a clear idea in the new State that there was a national interest that required investment and the willingness for sacrifice – whether that was on the part of individuals who would be inconvenienced, or in other areas of public life that would be squeezed to pay for it. That there was such a thing as the public good which trumped other considerations and that government had a duty to lead towards it. And that it wasn’t only a question for the government – that society more broadly should move forward together.
It doesn’t often feel like that now.
We have known for many years that our water infrastructure is crumbling, barely able to cope with current needs and completely inadequate for future demands, not to mind the challenges of climate change. Supply in Dublin, we are told, is on “a knife edge”. A few days of fine weather and we are talking about water shortages.
Similarly, the shortcomings of our energy infrastructure have been apparent for ages. We want to end fossil fuel generation but are sketchy on what might replace it. There are warnings of potential shortages in the years ahead.
Providing housing, meanwhile – the most pressing deficit of all – becomes harder because of the problems with water and energy, but also because of the State’s own labyrinthine processes for allowing people to build housing. We need at least 50,000-60,000 housing units a year (some estimates are much higher); this year we will see perhaps fewer than 30,000 units, the industry warns. Home ownership rates are tumbling.
Every week we see reports of housing and other vital infrastructural projects blocked or delayed by planning decisions and court judgments. These are not the only reasons for delays, for sure. But talk to the developers who actually build houses and apartments and they will all cite planning delays and excessive bureaucracy as one of the primary blockages.
In his business opinion column this week, John McManus surveyed one day of the newspaper – Monday – and enumerated its accounts of infrastructure holdups: water supply shortcomings threatening a plan for 6,000 homes in Glasnevin; a tenfold increase the estimated costs of the new national maternity hospital; no affordable housing in the first tower block on the Glass Bottle site in Ringsend; plans for four offshore wind farms in trouble; an estimated 20 per cent increase in the cost of the Dublin Metro beyond its existing €9.5 billion budget. Remember: this was on a single day.
[ Chronic inability to build anything big in the State is baked into the systemOpens in new window ]
Elsewhere in that day’s paper, Arthur Beesley dug into the reasons for the delay in providing adequate water infrastructure for a growing population. Planning and judicial reviews of planning decisions are a large part of it.
A vital scheme, the Greater Dublin Drainage project, was granted planning permission in 2019 after years of preparation. It was struck down after a legal challenge by a sea swimmer in 2020. It still hasn’t got permission.
[ How vital water project stalled for years over minor paperwork issueOpens in new window ]
Excessive objections and a complete unwillingness to consider the broader public interests by some judges are a huge problem. But the people charged with delivering these projects are not blameless. Where is the urgency? Where is the sense of an emergency?
The Taoiseach has been giving out about some local authorities not building sufficient social housing of late. But what’s he doing about it? Where is the personal accountability for council chief executives and directors of housing?
Part of my job is writing this column. If I persistently failed to deliver it on Friday mornings, I think the editor of The Irish Times might find someone else to do the job.
We should not fall into the trap of thinking that everything is a disaster, but I am afraid something has gone badly wrong with the way the State is run. It seems incapable of saying to people – and enshrining in law the idea – that, yes, you may not like it, but we are going to do it because it’s in the wider public interest.
That is certainly a failing of successive governments. But it is bigger than that, too. It is about our entire political, legal and administrative culture. Governments have had a strategy to tackle the housing crisis for the past decade. But, as they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Without a change in that culture, you can forget about building any more Ardnacrushas.
