Irish Sea Region

The Dublin Regional Authority is leading the way on an important initiative for the Irish Sea Region.

The project involves Belfast, Merseyside the Isle of Man, University College Cork and the North West Development Agency in the UK, all are committed to developing a strong Irish Sea regional grouping.

A regional policy emphasising the importance of protecting marine ecology whilst developing economic links will also benefit Dublin Bay. Read more here…

Will the boom actually cost us money?

Two newspaper articles this week report on the fall out from the property boom and investment madness that gripped Ireland.  Firstly in today’s Irish Independent there’s a report stating that 300,000 homes lie empty around the country.   The figure was calculated by the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (Nirsa), based at NUI Maynooth.

Then in yesterday’s Irish Times, we read about the sharp increase in the number of people seeking help from the Money and Budgeting Services Offices (MABS).  The MABS 2009 report gives a breakdown of who used their services last year, and in 2009 the newest category of clients were most noticeably people who have invested heavily in ‘buy to let’ properties and who cannot meet these mortgage repayments.

Reading both these articles and the obvious cause and effect outlined in the reports, could we eventually discover that rather than making us better off in the long term, the boom years might actually cost us money?   An interesting study I believe would be a cost benefit analysis of the property boom to the Irish taxpayer.  

To calculate the human and national cost to the exchequer, the study should look at the cost of personal debt, construction industry related unemployment, un-paid development levys, social welfare supports for mortgage repayments, bank bail-out schemes…..and so on.  Then study what strategic investments were made during our boom, such as water, public transport, education, health.  In other words investments that give long term benefit to sociey as a whole. 

I wonder would we  find that the boom indeed was ‘boomier’ as Bertie Ahern predicted, but in ways that the Irish taxpayer did not expect.

We all know the arms trade is big business

Photo: Indymedia UK

Global Issues website posted very sobering global arms trade statistics, the quote that got my attention was the information on UN Security Council membership ”The five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China. Together, they are responsible for eighty-eight per cent of reported conventional arms exports.”

The EU is also seeking to become a major player in the global arms trade.  Many people who voted yes for the last Lisbon Treaty referendum, did so because of environment, equality and human rights provisions in the Treaty.  But now we need to focus on the environment, equality and human rights implications of a stronger EU Arms Industry, and how that will compromise EU policy on the rights of non EU citizens.