OPINION: Spare us the egregious buck-passing, please

On October 27, The Guardian newspaper featured an article under the heading ‘Simon Harris says lack of infrastructure could become a ‘drag’ on Ireland’s competitiveness’.
The Taoiseach’s diagnosis was that the time had come to ‘cut through bureaucracy … and other things that stifle the delivery of infrastructure’, mainly in housing, transport, health and energy. The message the Taoiseach wanted to convey was that unnamed bureaucrats and other ‘things’ prevented his government from acting in a timely and decisive fashion to address these challenges.
It does not appear to have occurred to the Taoiseach that these barriers are located within the governance system of which he is the leader. So, spare us the egregious buck-passing. If you are Taoiseach, you own the problems and are responsible for producing solutions.
The Taoiseach was not announcing something that would take anybody by surprise. He was merely stating the obvious – and he is a member of a political party that has been in government since 2011, in coalition with Labour, Fianna Fáil and the Greens at different times. Our current economic problems have become ever more serious and policy responses have done little to address them effectively.
Meanwhile, other EU member states (Spain, Estonia, Poland, Czechia) have powered ahead from a level of income much lower than Ireland’s, and are now mounting a serious challenge to the Irish development model built on a constant inflow of foreign direct investment that requires efficient infrastructure. Yet, the Taoiseach spoke as if he were a member of the opposition whose job it is to criticise the Government but who is powerless to implement policy.

Bizarre aspect
A bizarre aspect of this sorry saga is the report issued by the Fiscal Advisory Council (FAC) in October (‘Ireland’s Infrastructure Demands’). The FAC was set up in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse with a mandate to encourage moderation – indeed, frugality – in public expenditure. So, when this body highlights yawning deficits in our infrastructure, and recommends that they be addressed by increased public investment, you know that we are in a really bad place.
Cutting to the chase, the FAC compared Ireland’s infrastructure to other high-income European countries and found that a common story emerges. Ireland’s national capital stock – a measure of its overall infrastructure – was well below average in the mid-1990s, and while some progress was made, our infrastructure remains 25 percent lower than average for high-income European countries. And we all know that the comparison for our Northern and Western region is certain to be even more dire.
So, with 18 government departments, vast resources of the civil service, augmented by multitudes of state bodies like TII, TFI, Uisce, Iarnród Eireann, etc, assisted by an even larger array of private consultancy firms (Arup, EY, PWC, Accenture, etc), we have ended up with a serious infrastructure crisis that makes nonsense of the government’s own national development plan: Project Ireland 2040. Yet the problem is diagnosed as excessive red tape and other ‘things’. I think that there is less going on here than meets the eye!

Telling contrast
By way of contrast, turn back to the decade that followed Irish independence in 1922. After a disastrous civil war, the state was almost bankrupt and a massive share of public expenditure was needed to establish and maintain law and order. The new state’s infrastructure had been trashed and in a rapidly modernising world, massive action was needed in areas like electricity generation.
In 1923, Thomas McLaughlin, an engineer, approached the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Patrick McGilligan, with a proposal for an ambitious hydroelectric project based on harnessing the Shannon. Given those times, this must have seemed like a proposal to launch a project to land on the moon.
In September 1924, the German firm Siemens was selected as the main contractor (much to the annoyance of the British press!) and the government appointed a team of experts from Norway and Switzerland to check its viability. It caused considerable political controversy, as the cost of £5.2 million was a fifth of the new state’s entire 2025 budget of £25 million. The equivalent share today would be €25 billion.
A completion time limit of three-and-a-half years was written into the contract, with penalty clauses for failure of adherence to this deadline. In 1925, Siemens started work on what was then the largest hydroelectric scheme in the world, with Dr McLaughlin as managing director. In 1927, the ESB was established and took control of the scheme and electricity supply and generation generally.
The Shannon Scheme was officially opened on July 22, 1929. One of the largest engineering projects of its day, it served as a model for large-scale electrification projects worldwide. Operated by the ESB, it had an immediate impact on the social, economic and industrial development of Ireland. By 1935, it was producing 80 percent of Ireland’d electricity, a share that fell gradually over the years as other plants were built. 
In view of what they achieved so effectively and with such limited resources, I believe that the ministers of that first government of our state and their pioneering engineer experts would be shocked at the lethargy, lack of vision and incompetence of our government today.

•  John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.