New Office of the Planning Regulator

Over a year on from the publication of the Mahon Tribunal Report the Government has moved to implement one of its key recommendations – the establishment of an office of the Planning Regulator (OPR). The OPR will entail a radical transformation of the way in which planning policy has been implemented in Ireland to-date. I have previously posted on the dilemma which has been facing the Government in crafting the policy response to Mahon’s recommendations – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?). I argued that the OPR should have independent oversight authority to issue Section 31 Directions to planning authorities but with a failsafe mechanism built in so that the Minister would have the power to override the OPR in the unlikely circumstances where it fails to act or acts inappropriately. However, the Government has plumped for an alternative option whereby Section 31 powers remain with the Minister of the day. The role of the OPR will be to advise the Minister on the content of development plans and where appropriate provide recommendations (which will be published to ensure accountability) on whether the plan should be amended or rejected.  The new OPR will also have the authority to initiate investigations following complaints from the public and will be an independent corporate entity staffed primarily by redeployment from An Bord Pleánala.  An Bord Pleanála is one of the few planning bodies to come out of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ with its reputation relatively untarnished. Since its establishment it has developed a strong culture of independence and impartiality and has, on occasion, been unafraid to ruffle some feathers on major planning decisions.

While a new oversight regime is important, since the introduction of the 2010 Planning Act the latitude for planning authorities to stray from national spatial policy has been greatly diminished. Of much greater potential is the new role which will be mandated to the OPR to carry out research, training and education in planning and the built environment. Public education on the key role that long-term planning plays in society has been sorely lacking in Ireland and we are today paying the cost. In the context of the reform of local government and the mooted review of the National Spatial Strategy there has never been a greater requirement for bringing research and education to the policy front. It remains to be seen how the OPR’s new role in research and education will pan out and whether there will be sufficient funding allocated to carry out this critical work. Drawing on the extensive research capacity and experience which has developed within Irish academic institutions over the past decade should surely be part of the plan.

Gavin Daly

 

Satiric Video Wins Uniquely Dublin Competition

City branding is a tricky thing.  Cities are complex constellations of people, places, and events that although perhaps characterised by particular overarching ‘auras’ are nevertheless experienced in subjective ways.  Moreover, city branding is also generally concerned with presenting a marketable version of the city that can be used to attract inward investment.  So there is a constant tension then between giving voice to a version of the city that is reflective of the reality of urban life and presenting one that is going to be appealing to an external audience.  Even outside of such economic concerns, there are many different ways to represent the city in both positive and negative terms.  The city is a many-splendored thing that also encompasses the less desirable aspects of urban life that banding campaigns tend to obfuscate.

This may have been a lesson learnt by many in Ireland’s capital last week when the Uniquely Dublin competition announced its perhaps unlikely winning entry.  Uniquely Dublin was organised by Dublin City Council and the Little Museum, along with Tourism Ireland and Dublin Bus.  The competition website gave the following instructions:

“We’re looking for entries that celebrate Dublin today. If you have something original to say, we want to hear it. Show us something that surprises or delights us. It could be a cartoon of your favourite character or a poem on Sandymount Strand. It could be a poster for the new Dublin or a piece of local slang as we’ve never seen or heard it before. It could be a painting, a slogan, a piece of propaganda or even a song. Make us look at Dublin with fresh eyes. Your eyes.  All you have to do is make a piece of work in one of the competition categories [film, animation, photography, graphic design, written word, visual arts, music] and send it to us. Works will be shortlisted by our distinguished panel of judges and then the public will decide the overall winner”.

Some of the shortlisted entries (which can be viewed here and here) are earnest in tone, but the eventual winner took a more irreverent approach to representing the city.  The winning video entry entitled “Dublin City: a Radical Science Guide”, produced by Oisin Byrne and Gary Farrelly, has been described as “Flann O’Brien-esque satire” by the competition organisers.  In the video we are guided through a Dublin where Liffey water cures syphilis, the national parliament shares its premises with Europe’s largest brothel, and the Spire is a commemoration of Ireland’s space programme.  But as with any satire worth its salt, underneath the absurdity the video also presents an exaggerated depiction of current social realities in Ireland: gorgeous Georgian frontages masking cheap social housing and ‘Grafton Street’ a consumer wasteland of boarded-up shops.

Though tongue-in-cheek the video stands in clear contrast to the version of Ireland Inc that has been presented to the world, a depiction that frequently underplays the impacts of austerity in favour of putting a positive spin on the country.  That the overall winner of Uniquely Dublin was decided by public vote is perhaps significant.  Who knows, maybe the fantastical depiction of Dublin presented in Byrne and Farrelly’s video seemed more real to the voting public than the rosy outlook of the official discourse.

Cian O’Callaghan

 

What kinds of unfinished estates are exempt from the local property tax? A snapshot from North Tipperary

A few weeks ago, before the return of the snow and rain, I spent a cold bright day visiting a number of unfinished estates in North Tipperary.  A former resident of one such estate kindly took me on a tour of some of the local unfinished developments.  Being from the area himself, and having worked on construction projects in the past, he was in a position to impart to me some background information about the developments.  Anecdotally, he was able to tell me that, having visited the estates himself in the past, some minor demolition work had been carried out in places.  Rather than finished houses, the demolition that had been carried out had been of partially completed structures: essentially where construction had been started but had barely gotten beyond the foundations.  Additionally, there had been some attempts to erect more secure fencing around the unfinished portions of the estates.

As a student of quantity surveying, my guide also had a research interest in what was being done about these estates from a policy perspective.  And during the day we also talked about the overall response to the problem.  I gave him my personal opinion that not enough was being done by the state to combat the problems posed by the estates.  Whilst it was clear that some small progress had been achieved with regard to individual estates, the mechanisms that had been put in place (primarily site resolution plans) were voluntaristic and somewhat ad-hoc and, consequently, offered little guarantee that uniform progress would be made.  We both agreed that the most pressing concern was the health and safety problems posed by the estates that, despite the €5 million safety fund made available by the Government, clearly remained an issue affecting residents on most estates.

We visited four estates that day.  All but one of the estates had residents living on them.  What we saw there was perhaps not shocking.  To a certain extent unfinished estates have become a normalised part the Irish landscape, places we anticipate and expect, especially in the more rural parts of the country.  But equally, these estates are not, nor should they be considered, ‘normal’ places for people to live.  I say this despite the fact that, for thousands of households around the country, living on estates such as these is the new normal.

We are now over four years into a crisis that was both precipitated by and reflected in a catastrophic property crash.  Unfinished estates quickly became the symbol of the crash, and the iconic monument of the ideologies and development politics that drove the Celtic Tiger era; the vast glut of physical excess all too perfectly symbolising Ireland’s ‘era of excess’, our ‘greedy decade’ (as various newspaper articles deigned to dub it).  For a while these estates were big news, offering an empty (or at least partially vacant) signifier into which various commentators could pour their anxieties and outrages about the crisis and their hopes for the future.  But four years on the media frenzy has died down and the estates and their residents have receded from public view.  In the intervening years the unfinished estates of the Celtic Tiger have been engulfed in the general din of the ongoing crisis, swallowed by the war of attrition that is austerity.   They became one more problem in a country beset by a million problems.

Within this context it is easy to forget just how shocking these estates initially were.  In the initial reportage (even allowing for a level of hyperbole) these were truly alien landscapes that left journalists reaching for visceral language and allusions to grasp the social and moral catastrophe that the estates represented.  Take, for example, these two descriptions from May 2010:

“It was like a scene from one of those Chernobyl documentaries. Empty houses rotting away, broken pavements, no street lighting, rubble everywhere and pools of water that you just knew stank to high heaven. Except there were some people living there, young homeowners who were trapped paying premium mortgages to live in an unfinished estate where sewage bubbled up outside their door in houses they knew were worthless because they were unsellable” (Irish Times, 15 May 2010).

“How do you know you are in a ‘ghost estate”? Often, from the outside, they look like any other new housing estate. The houses are neat and freshly painted, lending an air of suburban order and respectability. They are quiet, but that could just be because the adults are at work and the children are at school. But when you get closer, you can tell. You notice, for instance, that the manhole covers and storm drains stick up out of the street because the final layer of the road surface hasn’t been laid.  And there are little lumps outside every door which, on closer inspection, turn out to be decaying phone directories and copies of the Golden Pages.  Where the doorbell should be, there is only a dangling wire…” (Irish Independent, 22 May 2010).

These examples are from a time period that perhaps constituted the most intense debates about unfinished estates.  And, of course, there is a certain inevitability that as these landscapes become more familiar they become less strange.  But paradoxically the inverse is equally true.  In a kind of parallax view reminiscent of a David Lynch film, these estates are so strange because for us they are now so normal.

This week the Government’s announced that of the 1,322 developments that were previously exempt from the household change only 421 developments would be exempt from the local property tax.  As Rob Kitchin suggested in his post yesterday, this substantial drop in eligible developments is the result of a reclassification of types of estates that qualify.  Thus, it is by no means guaranteed that substantial work has been completed on all of the developments that have dropped off the list, whilst it is extremely doubtful that these estates are now free of problems.  Furthermore, this latest episode follows similar statistical adjustments to the 2012 National Housing Development Survey that changed the definition of an unfinished estate.  There is a sort of politics of numbers happening here.  Judging by the figures being released by the Government, to the (very) casual observer it would appear that the number of unfinished estates that constitute a serious problem has reduced from 2,876 in 2011 to just 421 in 2013.  Any bit of research into the issue will suggest that this is not the case, particularly when we consider that housing vacancy (in the absence of outstanding construction work) is no longer considered a problem by the Government.

The estates I visited in Tipperary are all (with the exception of the completely vacant development) exempt from the local property tax.  It could be argued then that they constitute some of the more severe cases.  However, they didn’t particularly strike me as better or worse than many other estates I have visited, some of which have dropped off the list of exemptions.  Unfinished estates are not a homogenous category and individual estates face diverse problems.  ‘Unfinished’ is a slippery category and it is disingenuous to label any estate that is ‘complete’ as unproblematic when there are high levels of vacancy.  A vacant house may soon become again an unfinished house if it is not being maintained.  And the simple fact remains, the vast majority of these estates are still not the places they were planned to be and that were promised to the residents who moved into them.  They remain unfinished.  Before we find ourselves too jaded by crisis, it is worth reminding ourselves that we once found these estates very strange indeed.  They were not ‘normal’.  They are still not.

Cian O’Callaghan

 

Ireland’s Economic Policy Still up in the Clouds

Ahead of what is sure to be another harsh budget tomorrow, there have been a number of news stories announcing the creation of new jobs in Ireland.  The timing of this is of course strategic, offering a glimmer of hope in what promises to be another bleak winter of public service cuts and tax hikes.  The unstated message here is that austerity policy is working; that if we can weather the long winter of discontent the coming spring will be blooming with the new economic opportunities that are slowly beginning to grow again through the permafrost left by the Celtic Tiger’s collapse.

Leaving aside the pertinent issue of the crippling debt that Ireland carries, this message is still deeply problematic and the economic policy that it valorises is rather depressing.

But first: what of the jobs themselves?

The first of these stories was the announcement by the Government that Shannon Airport will be separated from the Dublin Airport Authority by the end of the year and merged with the landbank of Shannon Development next year to form a new State-owned company “NewCo”.  As the Irish Times report, “it was announced that two Shannon-based companies had signed memorandums of understanding to create 1,000 jobs within three to five years in the area on the basis that Shannon would be separated from the DAA” and that up to 3,500 new jobs are expected to be created through the venture.  According to a statement by Fine Gael TD for Clare, Joe Carey, “NewCo… will drive the development of a world-class aviation industry at Shannon, as well as working with tourism and enterprise agencies locally to the benefit of the wider region”.  This all strikes me as more than a little opaque and I’m at pains to see the evidence that splitting Shannon Airport from the DAA will have a decisive impact on its economic prospects in the absence of other market factors that have little to do with economic policy.

The second story, that US cloud computing company Dropbox are to set up their international headquarters in Dublin, was a little more conclusive.  The company’s decision will initially bring in just over 40 jobs, but this number is expected to increase once the company gets up and running in Ireland.  Part of the media allure of this story is that U2 front-man Bono, who was an early investor in the company, was instrumental in persuading Dropbox to come to Ireland.  Dropbox’s Sujay Jaswa is quoted in the Independent as saying: “Bono has been a great investor for us, and he and the Edge were very persuasive in their arguments for setting up in Ireland”.  Meanwhile, Bono himself suggests that “This smart and innovative company will find a smart and innovative workforce here in Ireland, with a creativity and commitment second to none. The Irish Government worked hard on this, and the IDA played a blinder”.

Bono’s comments are particularly telling.  In his rather patronising spiel, the Irish Government comes across as a sales team with the IDA as their star player.  But I can’t help but get a vague sense of an aura of incredulity emanating from Bono; it’s as if this was a game he had expected his team to lose, but by sheer guile and tenacity they pulled off the unforeseen victory.

There is something unsettling here that takes us back to problematic nature of Ireland’s economic policy.  The image that Ireland presents to the world is of a confident, creative, educated and innovative place, “the best small country in the world in which to do business”.  The hope is that by projecting this image, companies like Dropbox will come and invest here and, by virtue of the employment they create (if not the taxes they pay), Ireland can grow itself out of recession.  Meanwhile at home the budget does the dirty work of austerity hidden from the global spotlight, further eroding public services in areas such as Health and Education, and with them any substantive basis underlying the image of Ireland that the Government likes to project to the world.  And as the structural foundations of the state become weaker, the nation continues to practice the increasingly precarious policy of reliance on foreign direct investment.  The fact that in 2006 U2 moved part of its business to Holland to avail of a lower tax rate makes Bono’s ambassadorial role in brokering the deal with Dropbox seem all the more apt.  He makes a suitable figurehead for the casual indifference the Irish Government gives to the incongruity between its external image and internal policies.  When weighed against the deadening barrage of cuts that the last few budgets have brought, the small victories that these stories highlight, rather than signalling new growth from the ground up, seem more like small kites floating through the clouds, oblivious to the frosty landscape of despair below.

Cian O’Callaghan

 

Online television programmes and videos about the Crisis in Ireland

We thought it might be useful to share a timeline of online television programmes and videos about the crisis in Ireland which we’ve assembled for a third year undergraduate module we co-teach, Geographies of the Crisis.  We have tried to use official channels where possible, otherwise the links are to uploaded YouTube videos that have been created by others.  Most of the videos relate to the crisis in general and banking, property and migration issues in particular, as well social movements and protest.  They all concern Ireland rather than the wider European and global financial crisis.  Over time we’ll keep adding to the resource.

Documenting and Explaining the Crisis

Prime Time debate.  What an earth is happening to house prices?  David McWilliams versus Austin Hughes, 16 October 2003, Part 1 , Part 2

Futureshock – Property Crash RTE programme on future of housing market, 16th April 2007

Prime Time on property bubble: soft landing or crash?  Morgan Kelly, UCD, and Jim Power, Friends First, debate the state of the property market in April 2007

Bertie Ahern tells naysayers to commit suicide, July 3, 2007

Primetime Investigates – “The Pressure Zone“, Planning and land zoning, November 26th 2007

Prime Time on Bank Guarantee, Discussion by Brendan Keenan, Morgan Kelly, Kevin McConnell, 30 Sept 2008

Prime Time, Pat Neary, The Financial Regulator, 18th October 2008

Al Jazeera, Immigrants hit by Irish downturn, 26th November 2008

Primetime Special, RTE.  Banking crisis, 12th February 2009

RTE, How We Blew the Boom, documentary, March 2009 (YouTube version)

ABC Australia, Ireland feels full impact of global financial crisis, 4th March 2009

Prime Time Investigates, RTE. After the Goldrush.  The impact of the recession on ordinary families. 25th May 2009

Prime Time, NAMA 30th April 2009, 13th Aug 2009, 17th Sept 2009 and 3rd November 2009

Joseph Stiglitz on Nama, Nobel Prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz gives damning indictment of NAMA on RTE’s Prime Time, October 7^th, 2009.

Prime Time Special, Emigration, 12th November 2009

RTE Primetime Investigates on the banking system: Meet the Bankers, 21st December 2009 (on YouTube, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Primetime, RTE on debt and mortgage arrears, 2nd February 2010 (on YouTube, Part 1 , Part 2)

France 24 report, Leaving home: young Irish find the grass is greener 24th March 2010

Al Jazeera, Irish economy in sharp contraction, 26 Mar 09

RTE, Aftershock, week-long series of programmes seeking to capture the transformation over the previous 18 months, to take stock, and to try to identify ways to recover.

RTE, Ghostland documentary (part of Aftershock), 9th May 2010 (on YouTube, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)

BBC News, ghost estate reports, May 2010 (report 1, report 2)

Prime Time, RTE, The property trap.  15th July 2010

Prime Time, RTE, A haunted landscape, 29th July 2010,

Reuters, ghost estates report, 30th July 2010

Prime Time, RTE, Second anniversary retrospective on bank guarantee scheme, 28th September 2010

Prime Time, RTE, Fiscal Flatline.  19th October 2010

TV3 News, Ghost Estates – Riverside Portarlington, Nov 2010

AFP, Ghost estates haunt Irish landscape, 26th November 2010

CNN report, Ireland haunted by ghost estates, 30th Sept 2010

Prime Time, RTE, Troika arrive The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund have arrived in Dublin, 18 November 2010

Journeyman Pictures, Let Them Eat Cheese, November 2010

BBC News, World Have Your Say, Ireland economic special, 19th November 2010 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Prime Time, RTE, EU/IMF and Anglo Look at the fine print in the EU/IMF deal and how Anglo Irish Bank brought a country to the brink, 30th November 2010

France 24, Irish crisis: the spectre of emigration, 30th November 2010

ABC Australia, Journeyman Pictures, Irish Despair, 6th December 2010

Fintan O Toole, Fintan O’Toole on Ireland – SpunOut.ie Interviews 13^th December, 2010,

Euronews, Ireland’s ghost estates, 10th December 2010

Prime Time Investigates.  Carry on Regardless, 21 Dec 2010.  How developers lives have been affected or not by the crash. (YouTube, Part 1, Part 2)

BBC Panorama, How to blow a fortune (Ireland’s real estate bust), 21st February 2011

ABC Australia, Journeyman Pictures, Goodbye My Ireland, 28th February 2011

Geophiles report, Ghost towns, 30th March 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Home Truths on negative equity, 5th April 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Bank Rupture, Nyberg Report, 19th April 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Regeneration, May 3^rd 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Quinn versus Anglo, 14th June 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Namaland.  6th September 2011 (on YouTube)

PressTV, On the Edge, Irish economic crisis, 23rd September 2011

Immanuel Wallerstein, Capitalism Collapse? ‘Cash grab system cannot survive storm’, 9^th October 2011

US Debt Crisis – Perfectly Explained, 

Prime Time, RTE, What lies beneath.  Priory Hall, 18th October 2011

AFP, Ireland considers new law to reposess ghost estates, 24th October 2011

Joseph Stiglitz, Lessons from Iceland’s Economic Crisis, 26^th October, 2011

RTWEthepeople, Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy with Conor McCabe, 30th October 2011

INET Economics, Stephen Kinsella – Irish Crisis Demands New Economic Thinking, 29th November 2011

Prime Time Special, One year on the bailout, 28th November 2011

Joseph Stiglitz on Ireland, Stiglitz on Ireland, 6^th December 2011

Prime Time, RTE, Troika Time, January 19th 2012

Al Jazeera, Collapse of the Celtic Tiger,  January 19th 2012

Punk Economics, David McWilliams series, January-July 2012 (Lesson 1: Crisis in Ireland and Europe; Lesson 2: ECB’s massive cash for trash scheme; Lesson 3: Playing games with liquidity; Lesson 4: Irish Referendum Preview; Lesson 5: China Panics, US ‘Recovers’ and Germany Flinches

Prime Time, RTE, New Departures on emigration, March 15th 2012

Prime Time, RTE, The Mahon Report – The Tribunal, March 2012 (on YouTube in general, re. Bertie Ahern)

Robert Skidelsky, The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on the Future of International Relations, April 2012

IIEA, Karl Whelan on Ireland’s Bank Debt and What Can be Done About It? – 29 June 2012

Tom Healy, Nevin Economic Research Institute, Claiming Our Future Launch Plan B, 25^th June 2012

Longford Leader, First NAMA property demolished, 24th July 2012

Social movement/protest

BBC report on protests, February 21st 2009:

The March – Documenting the march against the IMF bailout, 2^nd December, 2010,

PRI: Ireland’s woes through the lens of art, 7th Dec 2010

Pretty Vacant, PrettyvacanT, Permission to Land, Unused and Unloved, Shoot the Tiger, April 2011-July 2012

Darragh Byrne Videography, Occupy Dame Street, 22nd October 2011;

Spectacle of Defiance and Hope in Dublin, 3rd December 2011,

Naomi Klein, Fake “Debt Crisis/Bankruptcy”: We are NOT Bankrupt! Tax the Rich! 7^th October 2011,

RTWEthepeople, Audit NAMA, 23rd Nov 2011

Irishtimes.com, €1.4bn house is a work of art, 24th January 2012

Irish Times.com ‘Occupy Dame Street’ protesters removed, 8th March 2012

Romantic Ireland, Romantic Ireland from the Streets, 17th March 2012

Dole TV, Unlock NAMA, 4th April 2012

Mandate: Vote No to the Austerity Treaty, 21 May 2012

Irishtimes.com, Claiming our Future, Plan B, 26th June 2012

TASC: Fr Peter McVerry: New economic model must involve a more just sharing of power as well as wealth, June 2012

Rap Nuacht na hEireann, Episode 1, 24th July 2012

Radio Documentaries

BBC Radio 4, Olivia O´Leary on economic crisis and post-crash identity, June 12, 2009 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

BBC Radio 4, Dan O’Brien, Bailout Boys go to Dublin, 24th April 2011

Newstalk, Deserted village.  Documentary by Jane Ruffino.  24th March 2012

If you have any suggestions for other programmes/clips to include please put in a link in the comments box.

Rob Kitchin and Rory Hearne

 

Rap Nuacht na hEireann

Launched last month, ‘Rap Nuacht na hEireann’ (RNE) is a project by Darragh Kenny which aims to release a series of videos on youtube that combine a television news format with music and a rapping anchor in order to explore “news and views that shape Ireland but are often on the peripheral of the mainstream”. Episode 1 seeks to ask broad questions concerning “who controls the scope of the media debate”. In an effort to extend the level of debate generated, the author of the video has asked a number of people (including myself) to write pieces that comment on issues raised in different episodes. With that in mind, the intentions of this post is to function as a ‘critical plug’ for the project and to provide a space for discussion of both the video itself and the issues it raises.

I have written elsewhere on this blog about how political discussion in Ireland, as filtered through the mainstream media, can be limited in scope. While minor policy issues can be covered in great detail, more structural factors, such as the legitimacy of the form of capitalism currently practiced in Ireland, can be completely excluded from the debate. This continues to be the case even when those minor policy issues are effectively locked in place by the constraints of this overarching system.
The explosion of forms of new social media has significantly altered the media landscape by incorporating a range of new voices and modes of communication. In different ways this has changed how most of us receive and consume news. However, the presence of new voices in the media landscape does not preclude that we are now exposed to more diverse opinions or that our critical capacities have been sharpened. In one sense all the competing voices may cancel each other out. In a different sense, because we are inundated with so much content through new social media channels, we tend to be selective about which sources (websites, blogs, twitter feeds) we get our information from. Hence, the internet has a tendency to turn into an ‘echo chamber’ where likeminded individuals come together in particular corners of cyberspace. Thus, mainstream media remains an important conduit for public discussion, in contrast to the sometimes diverse publics catered to by new social media.
As a media commentary and media product, RNE fits right into the ambiguities of this space. The project aims for a populist appeal by presenting what is perhaps challenging content in an accessible and fun manner. It mirrors the format of a televised news programme, wherein news anchor Seamus O’Dea mediates between a number of other guests (an Occupy protester, an economic correspondent, and an investor) who offer a range of different viewpoints on events. O’Dea is intended to represent an impartial perspective. He is, according to Kenny, meant to be ‘one step ahead of the public’, and hence guides them through a series of issues that are articulated by the other guests. As such, a debate unfolds between the guests and O’Dea that is intended to open up spaces not normally covered by mainstream news.
While RNE draws on mainstream media tropes, it is very clearly a product of the new social media terrain. The project is hosted on youtube and disseminated through twitter and facebook. It also aims to take advantage of the blurring of identities offered through these mechanisms: Seamus O’Dea has his own facebook page for instance.
Whilst O’Dea and co don’t have Mos Def’s flow, the project should be commended for presenting a lot of complex information in a concise and easily digested manner (and in verse!). The news programme format functions as a way of distilling several voices and demonstrating their points of friction. The video isn’t always entirely successful in this regard. At times, O’Dea oversteps the boundaries of his supposed impartiality, and investor Vlad Doich Cuaill comes across a bit of a cartoonish villain.
Nevertheless, the project raises a number of pertinent questions about the shape of the current media landscape. In satirising the television news format, RNE calls attention to the proclivity of the mainstream media to uphold the status quo. When peripheral perspectives are drafted in they are often discursively marginalised as ‘extreme’ points of view and used to play against more minor differences between ‘moderate’ (Centre Right) responses. However, for these very reasons RNE is also perhaps in danger of falling into the chasm of an ‘echo chamber’, preaching only to a left-leaning choir while missing the ‘popular’ audience that it sets out to address.
These opinions are not intended to be a definitive pronouncement on RNE’s successes and failures. Rather they are open questions that need to be addressed through more general discussion. As a socially engaged internet public, the readers of this blog are in a good position to conduct such a debate, to ask questions like: How effective are projects like RNE? How can new social media extend the public debate? How can fragmented ‘online publics’ be reconciled with a ‘general public’? To address these and other issues, please send your comments to Seamus O’Dea below.
Cian O’Callaghan

 

If this is the standard of banking analysis no wonder we’re in such trouble

The Sunday Independent today gives a summary of a recent Deutsche Bank report on the level of housing oversupply in Ireland and how long it will potentially take to work off, suggesting that we need to bulldoze 200,000 houses.  Last week the Sindo reported on a CIF statement that we are about to enter a housing shortage, this week Deutsche Bank think we have 43 years worth of oversupply.  What a difference a week makes!

Interestingly, Deutsche Bank’s report uses present data relating to housing vacancy (from the Census) and population growth (from CSO).  It is data that is frequently detailed on IAN (which we used to refute the CIF pronouncement last Sunday).  Unfortunately, how DB interprets the data is totally misleading for a number of reasons as I’ll set out below.  First it’s worth seeing what they said, taken from the Sindo (I’ve tried finding the original report online but with no joy).

“Deutsche Bank figures suggest that there are 289,451 empty houses in Ireland, including almost 60,000 vacant holiday homes. This represents a vacancy rate of 15 per cent.  … Demand for housing is the key factor as to how long it will take for this oversupply to be reduced, and aside from demand for second homes the key driver should be population growth”  Based on 2011 figures which showed population growth of just 13,000, and the average number of residents per house, the bank estimates that it could take until 2055 for the glut of houses to be worked through. 

The report says that if current population trends are sustained, housing oversupply will take 43 years to clear (this excludes holiday homes from unoccupied houses in the calculations). If holiday dwellings are included in calculations, the oversupply will take 57 years to clear.

However, the 2011 population growth figures were well below the levels seen over the previous decade. But such is the scale of vacant property that even at pre-crisis, boom-year population growth levels it would take almost 10 years to clear the backlog. And this is before taking into account developments which may subsequently be completed, and houses which are still being built — 10,480 in total in 2011.

“Barring a sudden and sizeable recovery in Irish net migration, or a politically controversial policy of demolishing large volumes of excess housing stock, housing oversupply will remain a feature for many years, possibly decades, to come,” says Deutsche.

“This has ramifications for any bank with development loan exposure, and also for the mortgage market, where prices have continued to fall and oversupply makes any reverse of this trend unlikely in the near term.

“Over 200,000 houses would need to be demolished in order for the housing supply to fall to three years of current population growth.”

The first major problem with the analysis is that it conflates housing vacancy with oversupply.  We would always expect there to be some vacancy in any housing market, usually 4-6% of stock.  It is pointless counting holiday homes as vacant stock, they are owned and used and are not oversupply.  Oversupply is the difference between base vacancy and overall vacancy (minus holiday homes).  In Ireland, oversupply off a 6% base vacancy rate is c.110,000 units.  Still a lot, but less than half the total 230,000 vacant units.  Working out how long any stock is liable to last has to be based on the oversupply not vacancy.

Second, it takes no account of obsolescence.  In any one year would expect some housing to drop out of the housing stock because it has become uninhabitable or needs to be replaced.  The housing literature would suggest 3-5 in 1000 houses becomes obsolete a year.  An example in Ireland is the present obsolescence of some social housing that is being replaced through regeneration projects.  We would expect the obsolescence rate in Ireland to be on the low side due to the newness of much of the stock, but it is still an issue that needs to be factored into any oversupply calculation.

Third, present population change data is useful for predicting what might happen in the next one to five years.  For longer term predictions a more thorough analysis needs to be undertaken that looks at the population profile and considers patterns of migration.  As we posted on Thursday, in the short term there will be a reduced demand for housing due to a small cohort of 15-25 working its way up the population pyramid.  In the medium term (10-20 years), however, demand will steadily rise due to a large cohort of 0-10 year olds.  To put in perspective, in 1994 there were 48,255 births, in 2010 it was 76,762.  In other words, it is not enough to just look at population growth when considering housing demand, but also the cohort of household formation age.  Both the CIF and DB fall into this trap when estimating short and long term demand.  One also needs to consider average household size, which has been consistently falling in Ireland over recent decades.  Even if the population remains the same, if household size falls then more housing units are needed to accommodate people.  It is likely that household size in Ireland will continue to fall creating latent housing demand.

Taking the first three points together it is simply not the case that we have 43 years worth of supply, nor do we need to demolish 200,000 houses.

The fourth main problem with the analysis is it takes no account of the geography of housing and population.  It is pointless at this stage to talk about Ireland as a single unit of analysis with respect to oversupply.  As argued on this blog in the past week (here and here), the market in Ireland has become highly differentiated with respect to location, type of property, type of buyer and price.  In some parts of the country, principally inner Dublin, the level of oversupply for houses (though not apartments) is low, in other parts of the country oversupply is large. The profile of the population also varies across the country, as does the pattern of migration.  At present, migration is mainly from rural areas to urban areas, and from inner city to outer suburb.  As such, the level of oversupply and how long it will take to work off differs enormously across the country.  It is certainly the case that the four principal cities and their hinterlands will work their oversupply off first and will be first to start building new houses and this will be within the next decade.  It will take longer in rural areas.

Neither the CIF or DB reports are particularly helpful as neither is realistic, based on a limited set of data and flawed assumptions.  Given the political influence of both, I find it extremely worrying that the standard of their analysis is so weak.  Indeed, given how poor it is, if this is the usual standard, it’s no wonder Ireland and Europe are in the trouble they’re in.  What is needed at this stage is some proper demographic and housing modelling for the country under different scenarios that will give us some reasonable projections as to take-up of stock and future demand.

Rob Kitchin

 

Proximity, distance, and the crisis

This crisis is inherently spatial. Where should the axe fall? Where will sovereignty be located? What shape should society take now, or in the future? However, these questions of ‘whereness’ or spatial form are by no means the only spatial issues we need to consider. There are also all sorts of issues to do with proximity and distance. Take a story in today’s Irish Times. Christine Lagarde has been in Latvia telling the people there that their austerity has been worth it; that toughing it out is for the best. And in the process she’s telling everyone else – people far from Latvia, such as people here in Ireland – to look at their example and get on with the suffering.

Lagarde can easily say such things. She hasn’t (although please correct me if I’m wrong) had to endure much austerity in the last few years. Like her fellow IMF folks (ahem, Ajay Chopra, Merrion Hotel…), she probably stays in the finest hotels in whichever country she’s visiting. Most likely (although, again, please do correct me) the closest she’ll come to spending time with those who are really feeling the brunt of austerity will be when she swishes her way past hotel staff on the way to meeting other members of the European or global elite. She’s distant from the reality of those who are really suffering from this crisis, even though discursively she’ll no doubt claim to be working for and closely with them. So proximity and distance.

But wait, there’s more.  Turning the pages of the Times today, another example leaps out. Vincent Browne gets it absolutely spot on with his attack on Michael Noonan. Browne’s argument is that Noonan and people like him, such as Lagarde, need to stop hanging out with their chums in Davos or Monaco or wherever the latest conflab is held. Instead, they should be spending time with their constituents and experiencing what cutbacks or unemployment really entail. Stop being distant, he argues; get up close. So proximity and distance again.

What difference there is between proximity and distance, what that space between is like, has possibly never been so important. This is especially the case regarding material inequality. Of course (and I’m trying to be ‘fair and balanced’ here), many of the champions and defenders of the particular form of capitalism we (exist within and) produce might very well have come from humble backgrounds, and so they might understand perfectly well what living a truly austere life is like. And maybe many of the politicians who trumpet the argument that we have no choice but to stay in this game and not try to leave, and that we must stay open in particular ways and just be a certain way (for these are the arguments we have been served since the crisis began; dismal, unimaginative arguments that are precisely about Ireland’s geographical position and character)… maybe they also know what it’s like not to be so very handsomely paid, or even what it’s like to have a fixed low income cut by ten euros a week. Maybe.

But the blunt truth is that the economy and world they argue for is resulting in such a schism, such a gap, such a social and spatial distance between those who do well out of this game (the 1%, as the Occupy movement call them) and those who do not, that the all-important aggregate or effective demand that capitalists need for their profits to flow is failing to take shape.

The upshot is that this crisis isn’t just about government deficits or property bubbles / diseases. It’s also about the effects of growing inequality, about the consequences of having so much wealth concentrated in the hands of such a small proportion of the world’s population. This is one of the most important yet least-discussed dimensions of the crisis: what to do, what to really do, about inequality?

[In this sense, by the way, a ‘hurray’ is due for new French President, François Hollande, who has at least raised the question of what the multiple should be between lowest and highest paid workers in France and, by virtue of that, Europe.]

But in the shape of the Lagardes and Noonans, we are led by decision-makers who don’t seem to want to consider this question. So rather than having leaders who want to get up close and take sides with those feeling the pain, we have leaders who seem to prefer administering the pain and from afar, albeit whilst claiming to be doing something serious about it all. In this latter sense, too, therefore, there’s a proximity-distance issue, because the distance between what our leaders should be doing and what they are doing is ever-widening. We’re getting further from where we need to be, rather than closer, and so long as we don’t get closer then surely this era of austerity is only going to continue and get worse.

Alistair Fraser

 

Ireland Inc needs to work out its position re. the Irish diaspora

In an article on Saturday in the Irish Times it was reported that the “Institute of Directors has strongly criticised the proposal to appoint members of the Irish diaspora to State boards, warning that aspects of the initiative are fundamentally flawed. … Maura Quinn, chief executive of the Institute of Directors, said the practical repercussions and unintended consequences of the initiative had not been considered.”

I’m going to work my way through each of Maura Quinn’s arguments, which somewhat ironically, I think, perfectly illustrate why we need fresh thinking with respect to the diaspora serving on state boards.

“First, the institute suggests that every State board should have in place a skills and competencies framework.  It believes that all candidates for a particular State board position should be assessed against the relevant framework, rather than appointed on the basis of being members of the diaspora, who have volunteered their services.”

I don’t believe anybody is suggesting that people should be appointed to state boards simply because they volunteered their services.  What they are suggesting is that there are members of the diaspora who would eminently qualify with respect to a skills and competencies framework; that have a huge amount of relevant experience and expertise that they could bring to a particular state body.  Ironically, there are plenty of people on state bodies because they are politically connected rather than having a particular competency – appointing members of the diaspora would actually work to help combat political cronyism in state board appointments.

“Then you get into the practicalities of people who are thousands of miles away,” she said, arguing that the busy schedules of overseas executives may mean they could not travel regularly to attend board meetings in Ireland.  Even though many multinational companies conduct global business meetings via audio or tele-conferencing, the institute believes it is not possible to build up the necessary relationship with other board members without physically attending meetings.  Anybody who is a director on a board will tell you that, no matter how sophisticated [the technology], nothing compares to being actually in the room,” Ms Quinn said.

This is utter baloney and reeks of protectionism.  Company boards and European initiatives are full of people who have to travel to attend board meetings on a regular basis.  Yes, these people are busy but things are slotted into their diaries well in advance and they regularly attend meetings overseas. We’re a small, open economy, people fly in all the time for meetings.  Moreover, many Irish people serve on the boards of companies globally and on European committees which they have to attend in person.  If we follow the logic through, Irish people should resign from such positions because they cannot possibly be attending meetings or doing a good job.  Moreover, a flight from Britain or northern Europe would take less time than the train from Cork or the drive from Donegal.  The argument simply does not stack up.

“Studies have shown there is a relatively small pool of people who regularly crop up on the boards of Irish enterprises, but the institute does not accept that seeking fresh overseas talent with experience of business in foreign markets is necessary, or even advisable.  There are lots of very good people here who are either currently involved or who would be happy to serve on State boards but may not have been asked,” she added. “We need to be more rigorous in identifying the skills that we need and ensuring proper succession planning.”  Ms Quinn said Ireland needed to be conscious of the “optics” of courting overseas executives, as it tacitly implied a lack of suitably qualified people in Ireland.  “If we are going to restore international trust in Ireland, we should be demonstrating that we have trust in ourselves.”

Again this is protectionism and hints at a deep inferiority complex and a fear of change as new thinking and new ways of doing things will inevitably follow external people being appointed to boards.  A true test of trust in ourselves is to have trust to open up our institutional structures and policies to outside scrutiny and new membership.  The argument about succession planning is a red herring – we can succession plan from diverse boards.  And no-one is saying that suitable Irish people not be on state boards; simply that they not be closed shops to people resident in Ireland.  Having a board of say ten people split 8 Irish/2 diaspora would allow for development, succession planning and external participation.

“In January it emerged that the Government was writing to current members of State boards to advise them that they had an option to waive their fees.  Ms Quinn said this suggestion devalued and demeaned the role of a director of a State board.”

So good, sound advice is only worth something if it is paid for?  And we do not want the valued time of senior executives in the diaspora at a bargain – or rather we do but we don’t want to formally have recognize it.  Again protectionism of the present system – we want to retain our cushy additional payments even though we have separate full-time employment and we don’t want anything to undermine this, like unpaid people who are more qualified for the job than we are.  Besides, I’m sure diaspora members will accept a payment if offered.

She added that the institute was not “suggesting that members of the diaspora did not have a role to play in relation to State bodies, but their role should lie in an advisory, rather than formal, capacity.”

That is, not straying into our institutions and systems where they might come to see how the Irish state really works.

Mark Boyle and myself have done a fair bit of work on diaspora strategies over the past couple of years.  We’ve written reports for the Irish, Scottish, Armenian and Canadian governments, as well as the World Bank, and spoken to them at length, and we’ve studied the diaspora policies and programmes in a number of countries.  The arguments expressed by the Institute of Directors flies in the face of all thinking in field of diaspora policy.

In fact, the argument sets of all kinds of alarm bells with respect to how Ireland Inc views and values the Irish diaspora.  There has been a lot of government rhetoric about how the diaspora can help Ireland grow its way out of the present crisis and economic recession.  It seems, however, that such help is to be provided informally, with no official recognition, and with little official value placed upon it.  Instead, we get a set of spurious and self-interested arguments as to why it cannot be formally recognised.

Frankly, this position is baloney and wrongheaded and will be counterproductive.  Indeed, with this attitude, it would not surprise me if movers and shakers in the Irish diaspora the next time a government body asks them for advice, investment or to travel back to Ireland for something like ‘The Gathering’ tells Ireland Inc to take a running jump.  Diaspora strategies are built on relationships of give and take.  One cannot expect to simply take solely on one’s terms and with no give.

Someone from Ireland Inc needs to have a quiet word with the Institute of Directors and re-frame their thinking before too much damage is done.  We need the Irish diaspora on our side and on our state boards.

Rob Kitchin

 

MyPlan.ie goes live: All 400 development plans in Ireland in one system

The Department of Environment’s new MyPlan planning and spatial data portal went live at 1pm today.  What the system does is allows the public to view the 400 development and local area plans, developed by the 88 planning authorities, across the country in one easy to use mapping tool, along with other relevant planning information such as census, heritage sites, patterns of housing development, and so on.  The system allows the user to overlay a range of different information and to query individual parcels of land.  It should help facilitate local authorities and other agencies in better coordinating plans through the sharing of information and to work collaboratively on major infrastructural projects.  It’s not been a straightforward job to create as every planning authority has been using its own systems to date in terms of technologies and classification systems.  It is a huge step forward to have all the plans in one location and fully accessible to the public.  Click on the image below to jump straight into the mapping system.

Rob Kitchin and Justin Gleeson