Check it out HERE<\/a> and happy reading <\/p>\nHe wants housing faster, infrastructure quicker, decisions without all that messy \u201cpublic\u201d stuff getting in the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has achieved a lot, has Collison, but his shopping list is nothing that you wouldn\u2019t hear from a standard vox pop at the Dublin Horse Show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s touching really \u2014 billionaires always have the most vulnerable at heart. If you listen closely, you can hear the great social justice rallying cries: \u201cWon\u2019t someone think of the data centres?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collison\u2019s concerns, however, speak to a contradiction that lives within all of us \u2014 we want everything to be better, faster, today, but show us how that sausage gets made and we\u2019d recoil at the blood soaked sawdust on the butcher’s floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We may cry for the environment, the vulnerable, the homeless, but those tears fall in equity-shaped droplets.<\/p>\n
Indulge in me the dreamer for a moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In my imagination, the ghost of James Connolly \u2014 moustache bristling like a startled terrier \u2014 decides to have a word.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only Connolly isn’t one for LinkedIn think-pieces; instead, he chooses the traditional Irish method of political dialogue: Trapping someone in a lift.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4842582_5_articleinline_692841.jpg\" "\\"James")
James Connolly chooses the traditional Irish method of political dialogue: Trapping someone in a lift.\u00a0Picture: Time Life Pictures\/Mansell\/Time Life Pictures\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Picture it. Somewhere in the IFSC. John Collison \u2014 a proxy for the wannabe billionaire in all of us \u2014 steps into a sleek elevator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He presses \u201cPenthouse\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A ghostly hand presses \u201cBasement\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lights flicker as Collison checks his watch; efficiency waits for no billionaire. A voice, thick with Larkinite class struggle, rises from the ether:<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me, young capitalist, what is a republic worth if the nurse can\u2019t afford rent?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collison, to his credit, is polite. Billionaires are often terribly decent, especially when addressing the spectres of executed socialist leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, James, love the hat and everything, but if we streamlined planning decisions, think of the investment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At which point Connolly, being Connolly, doesn\u2019t scream \u2014 he simply looks heartbroken in that way only martyrs can.<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestment? My lad, we didn\u2019t die for investment. We died for people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lift shudders. The emergency phone connects to someone in a call centre in New Delhi, who asks if they\u2019ve tried turning Ireland off and back on again.<\/p>\n
This is the modern Irish paradox: We are a rich country masquerading as a poor one, run by people terrified of annoying people even richer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n We build hotels faster than hospitals, office blocks quicker than social housing, pandering to the mood swings of direct foreign investors rather than dignity of carers.\n <\/p>\n
And yet, the true test of a nation is not how quickly it can get a planning application rubber-stamped while on a Zoom call with San Francisco, it\u2019s how gently we hold the vulnerable, how firmly we protect the precarious, how easily we sleep at night knowing nobody is left outside in the rain unless they specifically asked to camp in a doorway for reasons of personal preference and spiritual enquiry. We are failing at that. Spectacularly.<\/p>\n
Back in the lift, Connolly gives his coup de grace.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot measure the soul of a nation in capital flows. It breathes in the child warmed by a public health nurse, the pensioner safe on a winter night, the worker who does not fear tomorrow. Not in airports and equity markets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collison \u2014 and again, fair play to the man for listening \u2014 nods thoughtfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, James. But could we do all that\u2026 just a bit faster?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Connolly sighs a marble-cold sigh and vanishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lift doors open. Collison walks out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The janitor, who earns \u20ac33,000 a year and has a bad hip and a disabled daughter fighting for supports she should never have to fight for, holds the door open.<\/p>\n
\u201cMorning,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
And that \u2014 that tiny ordinary moment \u2014 is the real Republic. Not the penthouse nor the productivity graph. Not the slide-deck about agility.<\/p>\n
If Ireland is indeed broken \u2014 and there\u2019s an argument there \u2014 it isn\u2019t because it\u2019s too slow for capital. It\u2019s because it\u2019s moving so fast it\u2019s forgetting people.<\/p>\n
Billionaires can give us efficiency, fair enough, but ghosts \u2014 and the working man and woman \u2014 remind us of decency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And when history judges us, it won\u2019t ask how \u201cagile\u201d we were.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It will ask who we housed, who we fed, who we sheltered, who we lifted up when the lift got stuck.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the only kind of fast that matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And may every future billionaire who writes about Ireland be haunted, not by ghosts, but by the stubborn, unprofitable truth that a republic is measured not in financial investment \u2014 but in who it chooses to help, and who it casually hurts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are moments in Irish life that feel like history is meeting itself coming in the door, like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[943,2284,29289,807,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-115126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cost-of-living","tag-history","tag-homelessness","tag-housing","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}