I warmly welcome the announcement by Ruairí Quinn T.D., Minister for Education and Skills, that a further eight schools in Dublin South will be able to undertake school improvements this summer as part of the second round of the Summer Works Scheme.
I welcome the €211,000 funding awarded to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council and the €123,000 awarded to South Dublin County Council as part of the Built Heritage Jobs Leverage Scheme 2014.
I warmly welcome the announcement by The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D., that seven schools in Dublin South will be able to undertake school improvements this summer.
Seven local schools will receive money to improve and upgrade existing school buildings. This first round of funding will allow these schools to carry out small and medium scale building works across three categories of projects - Gas, Electrical & Mechanical.
I warmly welcome the Home Renovation Incentive and I urge homeowners in South Dublin to avail of it.
The Home Renovation Incentive, as announced in Budget 2014 is designed to increase demand for small construction jobs and encourage people to invest in their homes. This initiative will give the local construction economy a kick-start and there’s positive signs that it’s already working.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Z1TjQzvgk]
Yesterday evening, the Seanad had an opportunity to discuss the current economic situation we now find ourselves in. We briefly discussed the subject last week and were told that a ‘visionary’ plan would be instigated this week. What Mr Cowen and Mr Lenihan brought forward this week was a list of cuts that were hiding under the term ‘savings’.
Where is the vision we were promised?
For weeks now, we have been told that the economic woes which we are now experiencing have been internationally generated. How can a government claim credit for a good economy but blame the international situation for a downturn? In development after development, whether large or small or in urban or rural areas, it massively over-incentivised the construction sector and failed to direct prudent investment into areas which would have yielded long-term results for the economy.
Above, you will find a video of my contribution to the debate.
More :: You can read the full debate by clicking here
More :: ESRI report shows that this year’s recession is homegrown (The Irish Times)
It is not an exaggeration to describe this event as a parable of our times. It tells us a number of things about where we are at this stage of our development.
First, it tells us that at the time of an economic downturn, the first people to feel the brunt are the most vulnerable in our society, those whose communities have been ravaged by under investment, drug abuse, social exclusion and the lack of basic facilities. It would be no exaggeration to say that when we talk about schemes being abandoned, we are talking about communities being abandoned.
Second, it demonstrates the folly of our over-reliance, particularly in recent years, on the private sector to address pressing social problems and concerns. We have become completely obsessed with outsourcing everything to the private sector and have little or no confidence in our ability or the ability of a properly funded public sector to take the lead in issues such as this. I am tempted to suggest that instead of denoting public private partnerships, the acronym PPP should denote private profit prevails. That is clearly what it means in the current situation.
The third thing demonstrated by the collapse of the PPP should be of urgent interest to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and to Green Party Senator Dan Boyle. It relates to the reason given for the abandonment of these projects. We have been told it relates to the downturn in construction, but what was less well noticed were the other reasons proffered by Mr. McNamara for walking away from these projects, namely, that he must, quite rightly, observe the reasonable and necessary building regulations with regard to energy conservation and apartment size that have been introduced in Dublin City. What kind of shoeboxes did he propose to build on those sites?
There are sighs from those on the Government side and no doubt this will be an issue at the famous event in Galway at the end of July. Certain elements of the construction industry, bigger builders and those who find themselves in the top two or three in the CIF’s recent publication, do not take the standards seriously. That is where the Minister’s attention should be directed.
More :: My contribution was featured on Oireachtas Report - watch it here. (From 15mins 45secs onwards)
