Ireland\u2019s infrastructure deficit is not just an issue related to business and competitiveness. It is something that blights the lives of everyone in the country: leaving too few houses to rent or buy; making commutes lengthy and slow; creating queues for hospital services and school places; and leading to a worrying lack of security in energy, water and wastewater services.<\/p>\n
And all of this is related. In Ireland\u2019s infrastructural omnishambles, a lack of housing near city centres forces many people to live a long way from where they work. In turn this contributes to commuter chaos. Major ring roads like Dublin\u2019s M50 <\/a>are already operating above capacity. <\/p>\n Inadequate public transport, in turn, means many commuters have no alternative means of travel. Tales of phantom buses and the failure to open any piece of fixed train or tram line since the cross-city Luas in late 2017 tell their own story. Poor water and energy infrastructure stymie attempts to build houses to help to address all this. <\/p>\n Many of these issues were evident in the latter part of the Celtic Tiger years, when there was already talk of another ring road around Dublin, either west of the M50 or across Dublin Bay through a new tunnel. The crash made all of this seem irrelevant. But the slashing of State investment thereafter is a key reason why Ireland now faces so many pressing infrastructure problems, including a housing crisis. The other ingredient was an economic growth rate post-2015 much stronger than thought possible and a resulting surge in the population. <\/p>\n After a period in the aftermath of the crash when more people were leaving the State than coming to live here, the trend reversed rapidly in the middle of the last decade as tens of thousands came here to take up employment. Despite housing pressures, this has continued over the past couple of years. <\/p>\n