Category: Dublin Mayor

Why is Dublin city’s infrastructure gradually falling apart?

by dsmooney, posted in Dublin, Dublin Mayor, Eamon Ryan, Garda, Policy, public transport

In this column, which first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on Monday May 30th, I ask why our city – Dublin – is slowly, but progressively, falling apart. This is a follow-up, to previous pieces on street crime and housing and says that the chronic shortage of labour due to people being unable to live in the city due to the soaring cost of living here is grinding life here to a standstill.

Dublin Airport CEO spotted at the Oireachtas Transport Committee on Wed June 1st.

This week’s column will be mercifully short. Not because I have deliberately set out to write a short one, but because this is all that is left over this morning after I deleted all the expletives and libelous references to Dublin Airport senior management, I angrily included last night.

The other reason it is short is because today’s offering is effectively a follow-up, to last week’s effort as I am again writing how the cost of living in Dublin is slowly grinding life here to a standstill. Indeed both this piece and last week’s are themselves follow-ons from a previous column on the level of street crime in our city centre.

It is not as if most people had not seen this coming. Back in October 2019, in the course of a tirade on Broadsheet about the perils of relying on public transport I wrote: Continue reading “Why is Dublin city’s infrastructure gradually falling apart?” →

No more no-go in Dublin City Centre

by dsmooney, posted in Dublin, Dublin Mayor

This column first appeared on Broadsheet on Monday April 25th and looks at the problem of random vicious attacks and anti-social behaviour in Dublin city centre. It is an issue which Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan and John Lahart both raised this issue in the Dáil on Wednesday night

Though the Dáil has not been in session since April 7, when it comes to political process stories the past three weeks have been far from uneventful.

There was the scuppering of Dr Tony Holohan’s Trinity College secondment; a saga which will to run and run as Deputy John McGuinness’s Finance Committee attempts to uncover who agreed what with whom… even if he must do it without the cooperation of the Secretary General at the Department of Health or his Ministerial sidekick.  

Continue reading “No more no-go in Dublin City Centre” →

The Total Mess That Is #Dublin’s #PublicTransport

by dsmooney, posted in Dublin, Dublin Mayor, Politics, public transport

This Broadsheet column first appeared online here on October 1st 2019. Myoriginal title for the piece was: ‘Little things make a lot more than their sum’, but their one works better as the piece is a critique of the poor state of public transport in Dublin.

Dublin’s infrastructure is straining to cope with the city’s growth… so strained that it perhaps the biggest obstacle to the city’s continued growth, but the policy makers seem oblivious to this fact – public transport is just example of that infrastruture stretched beyond breakingpoint.  

20190924_003726000_iOSBenny Hill observed: you can sit on top of a mountain, but you can’t sit on top of a pin. Classical Roman poet, Ovid, put it a little more philosophically, remarking that: “dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence”, but it was the late Albert Reynolds who put it best, saying: it’s the little things that trip you up.

You know the type of thing, the everyday irritants that eventually get to you and send you over edge. For me, last week, it was the total mess that is Dublin’s public transport.

Bad enough that the fares are prohibitive – Deutsche Bank’s 2019 annual survey of global prices and living standards declared Dublin the  second most expensive city for public transport in the world – but does it have to be so unreliable too?

With only London having higher fares, Dublin is now more expensive than Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, or even Tokyo, ask a Fine Gael Senator if you doubt that last one.

Continue reading “The Total Mess That Is #Dublin’s #PublicTransport” →

Mayor Culpa

by dsmooney, posted in Colum Eastwood, Cork, Dublin Mayor, Leo Varadkar, Limerick, Politics, referendum

This column appeared on Broadsheet.ie on May 21st, just a few days before Limerick, Waterford and Cork cities voted on having directly elected mayors. Only Limerick voted in favour. 

leocork.jpg

On Thursday voters in Northern Ireland go to the polls to elect three members of the European Parliament. Given the dominance of Sinn Féin and the DUP the focus will be on the contest for the last seat between the SDLP’s Colum Eastwood and Alliance’s Naomi Long. While a win for either will be a win for progressive politics, many at the top of Sinn Féin are hoping Long makes it, though their voters may not agree.

On Friday, voters down here will find themselves confronted by three ballot papers when they get to the polling station.

Not only do we get to choose Ireland’s 13 MEPs (two of whom will sit on the reserve bench until Brexit is resolved) we also get to elect 949 City and County Councillors from the almost 2,000 candidates on offer across the State.

And, as if all that responsibility was not heady enough, most voters (i.e. Irish citizens) will also get a third ballot paper, asking them to approve or reject two specific changes to the constitutional provisions on divorce.

But wait, there’s more.

Some very lucky voters will get a fourth ballot paper. These are the voters residing in Limerick, Cork and Waterford, who are eligible to vote in the local elections. They will get to vote in local plebiscites on whether those cities should have directly elected mayors from 2022.

Continue reading “Mayor Culpa” →

You thought #Aras2018 was bad… just wait for #DubMayor2024!

by dsmooney, posted in Aras18, Dublin, Dublin Mayor, Politics, Sinn Féin

This column appeared on Broadsheet.ie on Nov 6th, 2018.

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Some of you may have noticed that, apart from one piece back in mid-July, I had avoided writing anything here about the Presidential election.

This was not due to any lack of interest or me not having any views on it. I had many views on it but, as I had worked with one of the candidates in the council nomination phase, I felt it would be unfair to comment until the election was over and the results were in.

The strange thing however, is now that it is over I don’t really feel the need to opine on the election or any of the individual campaigns, as such.

I understand much of the online and media hoopla over Peter Casey’s second place showing, especially as it seemed, for much of the campaign that he was going to struggle to even finish last. But, it is far too big a stretch to ascribe his second place showing to his nasty dog whistles alone.

Continue reading “You thought #Aras2018 was bad… just wait for #DubMayor2024!” →