The world's richest banana republic

Surprisingly, our title does not refer to California, but to the Republic of Ireland. Ireland has done a pretty slick job over the last ten years of changing its image from scenic green fields to scenic green fields with high-tech computer plants in the middle. And one can definitely find such vistas, although our tourist board still prefers to market us to Americans as a land of castles, flowing streams, mist, and Guinness -- while asserting that there's a little bit of Ireland in all of us. But such issues are beside the point for the average Irish resident these days, who instead is confronted with day-to-day evidence of the utter incompetence and corruption of the Irish government.

A quick look at any day's headlines would make the case so let's just offer some recent highlights. Rail rapid transit: other cities have it. Dublin has one such line, the DART, that hugs the coastline and provides service north and south of the city. It's a good service for the areas that have it. But the railroad company announced, with 4 days notice to the average passengers, that it wants to close virtually the entirely southside stretch (i.e. half the line) at weekends for nine months. Sure where would anyone be going on a weekend seems to be the attitude.

In the face of predictable uproar, the government has produced the er... "compromise" that the weekend closures will be suspended for December, so that everyone can get their Christmas shopping done. But otherwise, don't plan on being able to get around Dublin by any means other than foot for the next 9 months at weekends -- it's not like all the people who used to ride the train on weekends will now disappear.

The bigger issue here is that the government has neglected rail investment for years at the expense of a road building mania, and now a lot of work needs to be done.

We said above that the DART is the only rapid transit line in the city. Plans are underway to change this by providing a light rail service to the southwest suburbs. This would be called, in a play on Irish, LUAS. LUAS was supposed to be one line that would begin in one suburb, loop into the city, and then come back out to another one. But somewhere along the way, the cost trebled and the ambition halved. Specifically it's now two separate spurs from the suburbs into the city -- and not to the same point in the city. And one of the lines is being engineered to cross, at street level, the busiest intersection in the country.

The above might just reflect incompetence, although there is a repeat offender element to the contractors involved in these debacles so one wonders why they keep being selected. But then there's the outright corruption. Somehow Ireland managed to rank a relatively good 18 (tied with the US) in the latest corruption rankings (low = good) by Transparency International. But knowing what we know about Ireland, this just makes us not believe the rankings.

Some of this corruption made some people very rich, and contributed to that phenomenon of the Oirish Businessman, trading on the brogue (or at least what foreigners take for a brogue) while being just another sleazeball in a suit. A RTE story today captures an incident that provided mere pocket money for a member of this class:

A builder has said that he paid the former [ruling party MP], Liam Lawlor, £40,000 to get a better postal address for a housing development in west Dublin.

Seamus Ross, of Menolly Homes, said the money was paid in two instalments so the houses would be listed in Lucan rather than Clondalkin.

[Note: in Dublin, Lucan has survived the association with the errant Lord to be considered a more desirable address than Clondalkin.] Lawlor provided full service, since he would rig the zoning approvals as well, although of course for a lot more money. Hey, being in the corporate box at Man Utd games is an expensive business!

The only efficient part of the government is a very slick spin machine that has kept the easily distracted media focused on celebrity feuds, sightings and weddings while exploiting a strangely passive attitude of the public towards various symptoms of our governance malaise -- the symptoms go undiagnosed. Instead, we're all supposed to be proud that two Oirish suits now own 20 percent of Man Utd. It makes that 3 hour commute so much easier.