The recently published NCC study on the costs of doing business in Ireland can be found here.
Year: 2010
The government has released its revised National Development Plan for the period to 2016. The documentation includes a short leaflet, Investing for Growth and Jobs: Infrastructure Investment Priorities 2010 – 2016. With a bit of chutzpah, the document claims the 40 percent cut in capital spending as “stimulus” for the economy. The emphasis is on new priorities and not on the overall cuts. Fortunately, the Department of Finance has also released Infrastructure Investment Priorities 2010 – 2016: A Financial Framework, which makes a more sober case for the shift in strategy (see, in particular, Chapters 2 & 3). The arguments of Colm McCarthy for just-in-time infrastructure provision (based on the time value of money) and more broadly for cost-benefit analysis – as championed on this site and elsewhere by Edgar Morgenroth – would appear to have been influential in the overall approach. Of course, the precarious state of the public finances looms large behind the change in strategy.
The newly released stress test of selected EU-area banks by the Committee of European Bank Supervisors (CEBS) is flawed in its methodology and the results are not a reliable indicator of EU bank sector soundness. A stress test should examine the impact on net portfolio value of extreme but plausible shocks to the key variates explaining net portfolio value. The CEBS report states proudly and repeatedly that it uses extreme but plausible shocks, and this is true, but it ignores the key-variates criterion of a well-designed stress test.
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment etc published a report on the November floods while I was on holiday. It is interesting both for what it says and does not say.
The report is clear about responsibilities: There are too many agencies involved, and no one took the lead. The report argues that the Minister of the Environment should take charge.
The committee also laments the role played by the ESB, and underlines that perhaps it should have been involved in Cork’s flood management.
The report has a little gem: “The ESB made the point that they issued two warnings on Thursday, 19th November, which was unique. However, the significance of the two notifications wasn’t appreciated by the general public.” Perhaps that is because the general public did not understand that “higher than 300 m3/s” really meant 535 m3/s. Along the same lines, ESB apparently told the Lee Waterworks at 22:10 that 450 m3/s was being released, while the actual release had reached 546 m3/s by 21:50. The report does not make much of this, but it does call for further investigations.
The report is silent on a number of things. It avoids questions of liability. It calls on the OPW to develop a flood warning system, but omits that crucial data are off-limits to the OPW and that the data exchange between Met Eireann and OPW is not perfect either. The report acknowledges that there too many agencies involved, but it does not name those that should be relieved from their duties.
The list of invitees to the hearings is interesting too: Only insiders were heard. Not at single independent expert was invited.
A while ago, I pointed out on this site that a season ticket to Shamrock Rovers offered remarkably good value for money. Any of you who acted on my advice will now be in the happy position of being able to buy tickets for the Juventus game on Thursday.
Just saying.