This is a map that shows which restaurants/bars and businesses in Dublin’s Temple Bar Area have Wheelchair accessible toilets. The wheelchair icon represents buildings that have a wheelchair accessible toilet and the pink markers show where disabled parking bays are in the area. If you hold a disabled drivers badge you can park in any pay and display area in Dublin City Centre, free of charge or use the designated parking bays.

Give it a moment to load, depending on your web connection.

Cllr Mannix Flynn’s Guide to Wheelchair Accessible Toilets in Dublin’s Temple Bar Area

An Píopa/The Pipe

The Pipe, The Film website

Update: the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons

#ge11 is the Twitter tag for the Republic of Ireland’s general election 2011

Boards.ie 2011 General Election Poll Brilliant take on the ballot paper, allowing you to make a virtual vote, and better, to acquaint yourself with your candidates in your constituency. Its current overall vote appears to be closely tracking conventional polls in newspapers etc, which is interesting in itself. Whether it is accurate for each constituency remains to be seen.

Some candidates you might not have been aware of (with links to boards.ie/vote)

Declaration of interest: I’m a friend and Aosdána colleague of Mannix Flynn. I follow Kate Bopp on twitter.

. Vote Mannix Flynn. running in Dublin South East
It has become a universal truth of General Election 2011 that “the people want change”, but, as citizens, we need to reflect on the nature of that change. Do we merely want to “modify” the way we are governed with a tired reshuffle of the personnel and values that have served us so badly? Or do we want “transformation”? Transformation requires courage and hope. Don’t do the same thing, expecting a different result

Mick Wallace, running in Wexford

We need political reform to bring a new politics, an end to political donations which separate the electorate from the legislature by allowing those with the most money to have greatest influence, a smaller Dáil with accountability and transparency in all its workings, a genuine effort to provide a decent State Health System for all, a greater emphasises on education including access to pre-school education, an end to expenses and pension abuse, and real local Government that works.

Kate Bopp running in Tipperary North

I believe we must pass power & responsibility to local Government at local level. Introducing directly elected mayors and giving local councils more executive powers. This will allow national legislators to focus on National Issues. The identification and abolition of cronyism is a top priority. I will also strive for shorter terms in office allowing for a regular influx of fresh knowledge and ideas. I will promote a greater accountability of those in office.

Gerry Kinsella and Pat Kavanagh of Fís Nua, running in Wicklow

Fís Nua is an all-Ireland federation with a political structure that seeks to bring together, under one umbrella, all those disaffected with the corruption in politics and government and who feel that they have been left without a voice within the political arena in Ireland.

Egypt

Perhaps, and perhaps not, relevant to #ge11, but a thought-provoking essay nonetheless. The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the field. , a deeply moving essay by Mohammed Bamyeh.

At this moment, out of the deadweight of inwardness and self-contempt, there emerged spontaneous order out of chaos.

Claiming Our Future, RDS Industries Hall, Oct. 30, 2010

photo credit: Philip Casey Creative Commons license: some rights reserved.

“The day was long and tiring, but also positive. The discussions were interspersed with songs by Mary Coughlan, rap from Ballymun’s Miracles Happen and ballads by Shaz Oye.” – Eoin Ó Broin

Eoin Ó Broin sums up the day better than I can over at Irish Left Review, so I won’t labour the point here, except to say that I too found the day long and tiring, but very rewarding and worthwhile.

See the results from our collective deliberations under * Session 2 -2A * Session 2 -2B * Session 3 – 3a * Session 3 3B over at Claiming Our Future

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_zv1CeuZjw

Anyway, the second on my result is an article called Goal Programming for Holistic Budget Analysis. published in Administration in Social Work, Volume 3, Issue 1 August 1979, so that probably predates my use of the term.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. – Ambrose Bierce

Anyway, there’s a model for the holistic budget, even if it is jargon and costs $30.

GOAL PROGRAMMING FOR HOLISTIC BUDGET ANALYSIS
Authors: James A. Fitzsimmonsa; A. James Schwabb; Robert S. Sullivanc

Abstract
Goal programming is presented as a technique for holistic analysis of a public agency budget. Goal programming is a variation of linear programming which has as its objective the minimization of deviations from a desired set of goals. It is a satisficing rather than an optimizing technique of value where needs exceed resources of multiple goals exist in competition with one another. A specific scaled-down budgetary model is developed using available public data from a State Department of Public Welfare. The model requires the development of a set of goals or objectives which are ranked in ordinal priority and the statement of significant budgetary relationships in linear equation form. The model is run under six different situations to examine its potential usefulness in response to different concerns of budget administrators.
Administration in Social Work, Volume 3, Issue 1 August 1979 , pages 33 – 43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHJmbe7jmSA

There is much about interconnecting with Luas and the DART, but while it does connect at two points with the Luas, it seems to fall short of connecting with the DART at Sydney Parade. See for yourself.
Click here to download a printable pdf of the proposed BlueLine route

Incidentally it is a south Dublin initiative. If you type in Booterstown, Dublin, Ireland into Google maps you’ll see the old demarcation between Dublin City and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The promoters, which include Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, are of course aware that a joined-up system is required, and hope that the Rail Procurement Agency would take over the “development of the technology,” which I presume means some sort of integration. Whatever about that, if it hasn’t been suggested already, may I propose the name G-Dart for rapid transit in the Greater Dublin Area.

I think Paul Melia’s contention that bus-tram rapid transit has never been tested here (in Ireland) is possibly incorrect. On February 19, 2007, the then Minister for Transport Martin Cullen said in a speech in Waterford:

We have also heard today that Bus Éireann is currently examining the potential for the introduction in our cities including Waterford, of ‘BRT’ (Bus Rapid Transit), a system of “bus trams” or “streetcars” popular in the US, Canada and in a growing number of European cities. I look forward shortly to viewing the 12-metre streetcar, just parked outside on the quay, which has been manufactured by Wrights in Ballymena, Co Antrim. The attractiveness of Bus Rapid Transit lies in its potential to deliver a very high frequency service at a fraction of the cost of designing, building and maintaining a full-scale tram system. (full speech here)

So what happened? On April 5, 2007, Mr Cullen opted for conventional double and single-decker buses, (Word .doc) instead, without any explanation that I can find.

But to get back to my Streetcars of Desire.

Aris Venetikidis has since 2005 worked in Dublin as an independent Designer/Photographer, a freelancer direct-to-client, and was awarded his MA in Visual Communication at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in June of this year. His thesis project is pretty stunning, and fortunately for us it is available on his website (aris design & photography): Presenting a Vision for Dublin at the NCAD Graduate Exhibition You can see his stunning maps which visualise an integrated transport system for Dublin. Dig a little bit into the thesis and you find the following gem. Not only does he recommend the Wrights Brothers hybrid bus trams I’ve been banging on about for years (nice to know I wasn’t alone) but he has some figures to back it up [edit: alas the link is lost in a re-design of the site].

Metro: estimated cost: €200 million per kilometre
Luas: estimated cost: € 33 million per kilometre
BRT: estimated cost: € 7-10 million per kilometre

So for every one km of metro, you can have twenty km of BRT for the same cost – that is to say, twenty times more bang for the buck, quite apart from the fact that its construction would be much quicker, cleaner, more accessible – and Stephen’s Green could remain a garden of tranquility rather than be destroyed as a transport hub. Matched with Aris Venetikidis’ integrated transport system (which does link Sandyford, UCD, Vincent’s Hospital and the DART at Sydney Parade) Dublin might be a beautiful place to live for a relatively cheap investment.

External Links

BlueLine website
Dave Olsen’s 5-part argument for free transit
Capital idea imagines new way forward, Frank MacDonald interviews Aris Venetikidis
Presenting a Vision for Dublin at the NCAD Graduate Exhibition
Metro North
Next stop: make up our mind time May 31st, 2010 by James Nix at Think or Swim

photo credit: lincolnian (Brian) some rights reserved.

Ultimately, the taxation discussion should begin with what kind of public services people in Ireland really want. And when we can calculate the likely cost of these services, we can present people with a realistic tax model for how we can afford to pay for them.

Seven Principles for Progressive Income Tax

I believe that when the concept of holistic accounting is considered, the cost of free transport would be considerably cheaper than any conventional figure. Holistic accounting takes in the social, health and environmental enhancements and savings involved in any costing. The health consequences of doing nothing will in themselves put a dent in any conventional budget:
“The report just released on Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy shows that there will be a 180 per cent rise in emissions from cars and trucks over the next 10 years if nothing is done. It shows this will cause huge damage to people’s health. Already EU limits for emissions from cars and trucks are massively exceeded in the Dublin region.” (Vincent Browne, The Irish Times, September 20th, 2000).

NB This is a very rough draft. I originally posted this on the alternative party forum, now defunct, and haven’t had time to update it. Hopefully seeing it on a public space again will prompt me to work on it.

As for the financial benefits, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce estimates that the traffic chaos is costing Ireland €3 billion a year.

But what about private sector transport services? Public funding doesn’t imply taking away people’s livelihoods. They should be funded in the same way, subject to a high standard of service being implemented. According to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Coughlan, [edit: she no longer holds this ministry] along with Bus Átha Cliath, Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann, up to 80 private companies already participate in the Free Travel Scheme, so there is a precedent for subsidising private transport companies.

The principle is already there, in other words.

The question that is never asked about subsidising private transport will of course be immediately asked when in comes to the public sphere – where will the money come from?
“Last year (2004) 528 people died on the roads of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland; several thousand more were seriously injured. The death toll on Ireland’s roads over the last 30 years is about 20,000, although advances in vehicle and road engineering and changes in the behaviour of road-users mean that the number of people killed each year is now half what it was 30 years ago. Each of those deaths is a family tragedy and many need not have happened. Bad driving is often a cause of road deaths, but in many instances neither the vehicle nor the road have provided road-users with adequate protection. see European Road Assessment Program

The Alberta Medical Association estimated that in 1999 traffic crash costs in Alberta,
Canada total $3.8 billion (1998 Canadian dollars), based on a value of $2.9 million
per fatality, $100,000 per injury, and $8,000 for each property-damage-only
collision.53 This averages about $515 dollars per capita ($335 U.S.), $740 per motor
vehicle ($471), and 3.7¢ per motor vehicle-kilometre (4.0¢ U.S. per vehicle-mile).
NB this link is to a pdf file.

At 528 fatalities in Ireland, that would appear to be a cost of 1.125billion Euro. That’s not counting the cost of injury.

It will in part be a long term investment in savings in public health costs, fines for not meeting our Kyoto Protocol agreements, lives saved, and world wide publicity for Ireland. These are beyond my capacity to estimate, but might make a nice thesis for an student economist. Directly in the short to medium term it would come from a parity of investment principle, and possibly charges similar to those in Ken Livingstone’s scheme for London. And not least, by the savings to the economy through reduced traffic congestion, as highlighted by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce (see link above).

I believe a small towns in Holland and the US provide free transport, but Ireland would be the first country per se to do so. Let’s be the first to do worthwhile things, especially now that we have a smoking ban success, and stop looking to Britain and the US before we do anything.

The advantages immediately apparent are as follows:

* Immediate and significant transfer of wealth to the poor and less well-off.
* Increased access to social and economic activity for the same groups
* Greater parity of investment in public and private transport (important principle)
* Greater speed of bus journeys
* Tax payers would see value for money. The tax payer pays, the tax payer benefits.
* Greater sense of public ownership
* Zero robberies and reduced assaults on bus drivers and staff. Reduced workload for drivers and
inspectors making confrontation with the public unlikely.
* No more wasting of inspector and court time bringing prosecutions
* Coupled with the proper implementation of QBCs, greatly reduced traffic congestion. This has
obvious large savings for businesses etc
* Reduced inflation.
* Reduced stress for the traveling public, therefore greater productivity and health; more free
time for personal and family interests
* Reduced oil imports and dependency. Reduction in car imports.
* Reduced traffic accidents as outlined above
* Improvement in air quality, and consequent improvement in health
* Significant step towards implementation of Kyoto Principles – a national obligation
* Alleviation of rural and suburban isolation – less depression
* The benefit to students and their families would amount to the equivalent of a significant
increase in student grants
* The present cost of pensioner and social welfare free travel would be absorbed into overall cost,
with greater dignity for pensioners and social welfare recipients
* Cut in administration, accounting, printing and security costs
* Redeployment of inspectors to raise standards
* Liberation of management from profit-driven to service-driven mentality
* Tourist relief and delight – a tourist attraction in itself. World kudos for Ireland.

I also advocate the scrapping of the extension of Luas lines, to be replaced by Streetcars – beautiful a bus-tram hybrid manufactured by Wrights of Ballymena. See my Streetcars of Desire entry.

Links

Here you can find a list of cities that currently provides their public transport for free. Part of Free Public Transports

Dave Olsen’s 5-part argument for free transit

The four major adopters of VistA – VA (VistA), DoD (CHCS), IHS (RPMS), and the Finnish Musti consortium – each took VistA in a different direction, creating related but distinct “dialects” of VistA. VA VistA and RPMS exchanged ideas and software repeatedly over the years, and RPMS periodically folded back into its code base new versions of the VA VistA packages. These two dialects are therefore the most closely related. The Musti software drifted further away from these two but retained compatibility with the infrastructure of RPMS and VA VistA (while adding additional GUI and web capabilities to improve function).

link to full Wikipedia article

The Musti Consortium “has also been active to transfer the M Technology and applications to new environments like Unix, PCs, PC networks as well as client/server environments.” This would appear to cut costs even further, and being a European implementation, might well be better suited to Ireland.

Given the experience with electronic voting machines, it would appear that the current government (March 2010) can be trusted to choose the worst possilbe option. To avoid disaster by default, a debate on the issue is of the utmost importance.

Electronic health records could cut costs by a third

RONAN McGREEVY

The Irish Times, Tue, Mar 09, 2010

Thousands of man hours could be saved if the State implemented an integrated electronic system of patient records

THE COST of administrating the health service could be cut by a third if integrated electronic patient records were introduced across the system, a medical conference has been told.

Currently there is no integrated system of patient records in the State, a situation which leads to thousands of man hours being spent recovering electronic and paper records.

Speaking at the spring conference of the Irish Society of Rheumatology last week, Dr John Carey said they could see three times as many patients if a proper electronic health information (EHI) system was in place.

Dr Carey cited international evidence which showed that one in five laboratory tests was repeated and one in seven hospitalisations was carried out unnecessarily because patient records were not found in time.

In Galway University Hospital, where he works, there are 20 different sets of health records in individual specialities.

Dr Carey said the integration of the health system into a “single seamless system” was achievable with modern technology and broadband and would pay for itself many times over after the initial investment, although he said he hadn’t costed the initial set-up.

He cited the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the United States, which administers the health of four million US veterans, as an example of best practice in this regard.

It has a widely praised system called VistA which is accessible to health professionals with secure passwords.

“I’m in favour of a universal system that everybody from GPs to consultants can use and we can look at what we are all doing.

“It takes time. If it is done well, it has great advantages; if it is done badly, it creates more problems,” according to Dr Carey.

“You should be able to access it from anywhere and see that information is accurate.

“There are huge savings in terms of finances, efficiency, etc,” he said.

US President Barack Obama made an integrated system one of the pledges of his presidential campaign.

Consultant rheumatologist Dr Robert Coughlan told the spring conference that having an integrated system would be good for patients because doctors would have immediate access to the relevant details.

He revealed that an e-clinic to be set up in Roscommon Hospital, which is connected to Merlin Park University Hospital, would enable rheumatology doctors to collect about 90 per cent of the information they need without physically seeing the patient.

It will also save patients long bus and car journeys from all over the west of Ireland to visit the hospital.

“There is no reason why this kind of practice should not be rolled out in all specialities nationwide with the support of private initiatives and the HSE,” Dr Coughlan said.

© 2010 The Irish Times

(published in The Irish Times, Mon, Mar 08, 2010)

In this open letter, 28 leading economists, social scientists and economic analysts tell the Government that it’s policies for dealing with the economic crisis are wrong. And they chart a different course

THE GOVERNMENT’S economic strategy is failing. The Irish recession has been deeper and longer than almost any other in the industrialised world.

photo credit: infomatique: some rights reserved.

Consumer spending has collapsed while at the same time unemployment and emigration have soared. Crucially, investment has plummeted off the chart. Not only have Government policies failed to stem this haemorrhage, they have actively contributed to this collapse.

The Government has pursued deflationary policies, in particular public expenditure cuts. The most damaging are cuts in transfers to low-income groups which, along with general tax increases on low and average pay in 2009, have reduced spending power in the economy at a time when it was most needed.

Equally damaging have been the cuts in public investment at a time when private investment has plummeted. This has laid the foundations for a low-growth, high-debt future where unemployment will remain high and inequality endemic. All the wrong options have been pursued.

Budgetary policies have been short-termist and reactive. Instead of cutting real waste in the public sector by increasing productivity and efficiency, the Government has cut public services and the living standards of those who can least afford it, further reducing domestic demand and, thus, employment.

These policies are weakening the economy’s ability to cope with growing debt levels. Without a strong recovery, tax revenues will fail to rise and future budgets will simply embed that deficit into the economy.

This will depress economic activity even further. This explains why the Government’s own forecasts for the deficit keep rising, not despite, but because of, its own deflationary measures. We are heading into a joyless, jobless recovery.

We require fundamentally different policies, a twin track strategy, which will maximise environmental and sustainable progress and restore employment while addressing the deficit. We urgently need measures to tackle five key areas which require fundamental reforms: our substantial physical infrastructure deficits;

our poor social infrastructure – early childhood education is poorly developed, primary and community healthcare lag behind European norms, housing lists continue to lengthen, while Irish public transport remains inadequate and under-funded; our high levels of relative poverty and income inequality; our under-performing indigenous business sector – which needs appropriate support to contribute to our export base, RD and innovation capacity; and our unsustainable reliance on carbon-heavy resources and activities.

It may seem astonishing that we face such economic and social deficits after 15 years of boom but these are the consequences of pursuing a failed low-tax, low-spend model which sought short-term gains from the speculative activity of a small but powerful golden circle.

Only the modernisation of our economic and social base through a sustained investment programme and a transformation of our corporate governance practices can overcome past mistakes. This will need substantial back-up in the form of retraining and return to education to ensure people – whether managers or employees – have the skills to fully exploit the opportunities that investment in innovative enterprise generates.

Educational investment, in particular, will be key to strengthening our export base. Driving competitiveness and productivity in the medium-term, while increasing employment in the short-term, is a win-win scenario.

We must mobilise all the resources available to accomplish this transformation. We still maintain a relatively low-debt status in the euro zone, buttressed by the vast accumulated borrowings in our exchequer cash balances (over €20 billion).

We can employ the strength of our combined public enterprises – their off-balance sheet borrowing and investment capacity to invest in our infrastructure and create new indigenous enterprises, both public and private.

We can further employ new funding vehicles – enterprise development bonds (eg green bonds), municipal bonds and the new National Solidarity Bonds – which can leverage our current high savings ratio and international investment. All this becomes even more necessary given the potential capacity of Nama to pile up considerable debt; at the same time there is little evidence of credit being freed up for investment purposes.

The resources and labour to finance this modernisation drive are there. We just need the political vision and will to make it happen.

Addressing the deficit needs a long-term vision of what kind of taxation system we want. In the short-term we need to target the least deflationary sources of revenue so as not to weaken our recovery prospects. A comprehensive property tax – encompassing both housing and financial assets – should be introduced starting with high income groups and eventually extended to all incomes. Reform of regressive tax expenditures (ie tax breaks that disproportionately benefit high income groups), shown by Tasc to be in the billions of euro, should be urgently undertaken to increase the income tax take. Extension of environmental taxes and incentives should be accelerated. An additional tax band at the higher level is needed.

In the medium term, we should explore the potential of social insurance and local taxation to broaden the tax base while providing real benefits in return. PRSI can be expanded to incorporate a comprehensive free healthcare system (in particular, primary care) as well as earnings-related pensions. Stronger local taxation powers have the potential to be more accountable while providing investment in services responsive to local needs. On the expenditure side, it is time to make public sector workers partners in the process to increase productivity and efficiencies.

As other countries have shown, employee-driven innovation (in both public and private sectors) has the capacity to reduce costs and increase output – much more so than crude, top-down employment and wage-slashing measures.

We can afford neither wasteful policies nor wasteful practices. But elevating the ethos of public service and personal responsibility will require harnessing the collective resources of employees through an open and honest engagement by all stakeholders – one that is not afraid to find and, then, repair fault.

What is absolutely crucial is that these twin approaches – investing in sustainable growth and full employment while addressing the deficit – complement each other.

This will require a level of fiscal management we have as yet not experienced. But it is do-able. Embedding investment, rather than debt, into the economy while restructuring taxation and expenditure in a progressive and expansionary manner to ensure a job-rich recovery – this, and not the current deflationary strategy, is the road to success.

This article has been co-ordinated by Tasc, which describes itself as an independent think-tank dedicated to combating Ireland’s high level of economic inequality and ensuring public policy has equality at its core.

Open Letter To The Government: The Signatories

PROF TERRENCE McDonough, Department of Economics, NUI Galway.

Prof Ray Kinsella, Smurfit Business School, UCD.

Prof David Jacobson, Dublin City University Business School.

Prof Paul Teague, School of Management and Economics, Queens University Belfast.

Prof Peadar Kirby, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick.

Prof Rob Kitchin, National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, NUI Maynooth.

Prof James Wickham, Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Prof Seán Ó Riain, Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth.

Prof Mark Boyle, Department of Geography, NUI Maynooth.

Dr Jim Stewart, Senior Lecturer in Finance, School of Business, Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Joe Wallace, Kemmy School of Business, University of Limerick.

Dr Michelle OSullivan, Kemmy School of Business, University of Limerick.

Dr Daryl DArt, Dublin City University Business School.

Dr Roland Erne, UCD School of Business.

Dr Proinnsias Breathnach, Department of Geography, NUI Maynooth.

Dr Mary Murphy, Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth.

Dr Colm ODoherty, Department of Applied Social Studies, Tralee Institute of Technology.

Paul Sweeney, economic adviser, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Sinéad Pentony, head of policy, Tasc.

Dr Nat OConnor, Tasc.

Tom O’Connor, lecturer in Economics, Cork Institute of Technology.

Rory OFarrell, European Trade Union Institute (Brussels).

John Corcoran, lecturer in Economics, Limerick Institute of Technology.

Michael Burke, economic consultant (London).

Peter Connell, TCD.

Patrick Kinsella, DIT.

Tony Moriarty and Michael Taft, Unite trade union.

© 2010 The Irish Times