A manifesto for joined-up thinking

Hey, heres a novel idea: joined-up thinking. But please be careful, it might catch on and upset too
many fiefdoms and vested interests, warns John Kennedy.
As an information addict, spending an entire weekend without broadband has been a nightmare. My
ISP informs me that it may take days to fix and has something to do with ports in the rickety local
exchange and the Irish damp. Fibre be damned.
How 1.8m fellow citizens of my country get by in 2017 without broadband is beyond me. But now I
can commiserate and relate how hard it is to get simple tasks done without this vital resource.
Believe it or not, it is 17 years since the first DSL connection went live in Ireland.
Bumbling, dithering and protectionism have brought us to this point. It is truly lamentable.

If anything, the upcoming National Broadband Plan ought to be a master class in infrastructure and,
for once, joined-up thinking. If it succeeds the way it is designed to, it could propel Ireland to the top
of the digital league-tables and a farmer in Connemara could have a quality of broadband superior to
that of a wealthy banker in Paris.
That is, if it goes to plan.
You see, its a largely rural problem and its execution will be a joint venture between the Department
of Communications and the Department of Rural Affairs, which last week revealed a 60m plan to
breathe life into rural Ireland.
Ireland and infrastructure
If both plans succeed, quality of life in rural Ireland will be off the charts as employment and
economic growth do their magic.
The National Broadband Plan, costed at around 500m, is being fought among three consortia: Eir,
Enet and Siro. The contracts are due to be awarded in June but this could slip to later in the year
because intense deliberation is required to prevent tribunals or court cases if unsuccessful parties
take umbrage.
The real victory for the National Broadband Plan will be seen in just how quickly the winner or
winners get down to business and just build the infrastructure and connect homes and businesses.
For this to happen, the usual planning delays involving county councils and the National Roads
Authority need to be eradicated.And thats why two departments Communications and Rural Affairs
are working together. Its called joined-up thinking and lets hope it works.

The problem I have is our history of infrastructure. Irish people across the world build the best
infrastructure for other people, like skyscrapers, energy platforms, motorways. Sure arent we the
hands that built America?
And yet, on our compact little island with our compact little population we cant get simple things
like hospitals or transport right. There are simply too many apple carts and fiefdoms around such as
unions, civil service cabals and overpaid corporate flunkies to mess things up.
We are the country that, after all, built a two-lane motorway called the M50 whichwas insufficient
for the volumes that soon arrived and had to be expanded. Not only that, but some not-so-bright
sparks decided it was a good idea to plonk a tollbooth in the centre of the highway.
The M50 became Irelands biggest car park. It still is if a car breaks down or, worse, if a tragedy
occurs.
So how do we get away from this tradition of droning union reps, hapless civil servants, waddling
and stuttering politicians and corporate skulduggery?
Transport
The usual lament is there is not enough joined-up thinking. The problem for me is I witness joined-up
thinking whenever I go overseas.
In Sweden two weeks ago I got off a plane, took an elevator down to a train platform and 20 minutes
later I walked into the lobby of my hotel in Stockholms city centre.I enjoyed a similar experience in
Lisbon when I went to the Web Summit in 2016. I was never more than five stops from the event, my
hotel or the airport.
Can visitors to Dublin enjoy such efficiency? Not a chance. And the capital of Ireland is one of the
few in Europe that still doesnt have a rail link with its own airport.
The Web Summit left Dublin because of shoddy infrastructure and insufficient hotel rooms, which
still shoot up in price to fleece visitors at opportune times. The Web Summit is unlikely to ever
return to Dublin and I dont blame it. It is understood that the contract between the Web Summit and
the Portuguese government has been extended from three to five years.
Wise minds need to look at the future of transport for Ireland and look beyond creaking buses and
diesel trains.
Energyand data centres
The news that the IDA is currently seeking land banks for new data centres got me thinking about
how Stockholm is also ahead of the game. Stockholm is using excess heat from data centres to heat
up to 10,000 apartments in the city.
This involves a partnership between the city, utility providers and fibre providers, to name a few.
The theory is that one 10MW data centre could actually heat 20,000 homes in freezing winters. By
that logic, if you took the 30 or so data centres clustered along the M50 north and south you could,
in theory, heat 600,000 homes in Dublin and its hinterland.
But that would require joined-up thinking.

Christy Moore sang Low Lie the Fields of Athenry and so do Irish football and rugby fans no matter
where they go. Its a kind of odeto the bleak and sorrowful times of the Great Famine and emigration.
But Athenry could now be a watchword for something altogether different.
Apple is trying to build an 850m data centre in Athenry, in a move that would propel the entire
western seaboard of Ireland into the digital age. The locals want it to happen because of the obvious
impact on their economy as well as the prestige. Unfortunately, the countrys slow planning process
as well as a legal challenge from three people (two of them local and one who wants to build a data
centre in Wicklow) could unravel the whole thing.
Meanwhile, a sister project for Viborg in Denmark, announced by Apple the same day in early 2015,
is already halfway towards completion. By the time the first sod is turned in Athenry, the Danish
data centre will have already hummed into life.
Losing the project would make Ireland a laughing stock warned Minister Sen Kyne, TD, and could
endanger the countrys chances of landing further data centre projects in regional locations.
As well as being a huge economic prize for the region, the real win from the Apple data centre, to my
mind, is the fact that the entire data centre will be powered by renewable energy. This could be a
game-changer in terms of how the country looks at energy and how we, one again, heat homes and
power infrastructure.
Think about it, one data centre requires roughly the same electricity that powers Dublin Airport. If
the whole thing can be done through renewable energy, whole towns could do likewise.
Remember, joined-up thinking.
Growing the community
Across Europe, there is a skills shortage of 800,000 IT workers. It is said that any time a major FDI
project is announced in Dublin, founders of start-ups sigh. Thats because they cannot keep up with
the generous perks like free food and gym membership, and, of course, the rising levels of
compensation skilled tech workers enjoy.
For FDI companies and start-ups to keep up with the skills battle, we have to be realistic and make it
easier for workers from all over the world to bring staff here. This is an upside because people
earning wages will spend locally, lifting all boats. Unfortunately, anyone who has had to run the
gauntlet of Irelands convoluted, bureaucratic visa system will tell you that it is not fit for purpose.

The spread of broadband and the current buzz around start-up businesses should mean that
entrepreneurial endeavours should not be confined to cities. Local Enterprise Offices do a great job
in helping founders get off the ground but the reality is that many of these individuals end up
working from a home office withfrictions like malfunctioning broadband.
Why not create entrepreneurial spaces in local libraries or town halls with light, heat and
connectivity to give entrepreneurs a place to go, meet and learn from and support one another?
Towns should always have a role to play in fostering business communities.
Pension problems and CGT
The whole country of Ireland is heading for a pensions time-bomb. Unlike ministers and senior civil
servants, most citizens do not have gilded pensions.
Around 60pc of private sector workers who retire do not have a pension and rely on the State
pension. So what if it is not there in the future?
Most private businesses in Ireland are too busy trying to tread water so they dont provide pension
schemes for workers as a perk or benefit. As a result, saving for pensions is a discretionary thing
and companies are obliged to at least inform workers or invite in reps from pension firms togive a
spiel. This is insufficient.
The reality is workers will need to save almost from the very beginning of their working lives. The
UK is already moving to make saving for pensions mandatory at source forworkers from the age of
20. In Sweden, workers are encouraged to invest 5pc of their pension in stocks, which contributes to
a vibrant and healthy local investment appetite and actually results in liquidity for Swedish
businesses. Again, joined-up thinking.
If we dont move fast on this, we are simply sending people like lambs to their fiscal slaughter.
Irelands outdated capital gains tax (CGT) system is seen as an impediment to start-ups, awarding
share options to employees and diminishing any gain entrepreneurs could enjoy from an exit, such
as a trade sale. It is almost predictable at this stage that every Budget is a missed opportunity to get
this right for once and for all.
Budget 2017 saw CGT cut from 20pc to 10pc up to a limit of 1m in chargeable gains. Notable
entrepreneurs such as Brian Caulfield rightly slammed the change as peanuts.
Under the current rules in the UK, the owner of a start-up who sells their business will only pay 10pc
CGT on the first 10m. However, an Irish start-up owner will pay 10pc CGT on the first 1m and 33pc
on the balance.
A resolution to the problem is sorely needed. Perhaps a re-think of CGT, share options and pensions
could join the whole thing up?
Irish healthcare is sick
Our crumbling health system is the laughing stock of Europe. It is a bottomless pit of fruitless
expenditure, mired again by unions and bumbling bureaucracy. Unfortunately, to enjoy quality
healthcare that isnt going to kill you means having private health insurance.

The price of premiums means our health system is becoming a mirror image of the unfair system in
the United States. While former US President Barack Obama tried to establish some balance to an
unjust system, any progress is likely to be dismantled by Trump and his cronies.
Why, then, is Ireland trying to ape the unjust American system? God only knows.
And so, private health insurance is unavoidable. And, if that is the case, a culture of mandatory but
affordable private health insurance needs to be established early in peoples careers and enforced at
source.
Most people believe their PRSI is sufficient for this task. It isnt. It is an ATM for the state to blow
money, as is the State levy we are still paying.
Education is our greatest resource
If the recent BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition has taught us anything, it is that Irish kids
are among the best in the world at science and technology. And yet, we are failing continually to
move away from the by-rote learning system to include more realistic critical thinking and computer
science skills. Countries like Finland are game-changers and are not afraid to tear up the rulebooks
in this regard.
Also, the CAO points race is skewing how studentsaccess college places, resulting in people ending
up on courses that are more fashionable than others, regardless of whether they have the aptitude
or appetite to succeed. As a result, drop-out levels and disillusionment are leading to serious waste
of time and talent.
New thinking and especially, joined-up thinking are required.
For all the sand in the Sahara
In conclusion, there is a much-abused barb that has been used to excoriate a multitude of
governments from the Irish Government to that of Soviet Russia that if they were put in charge of
the Sahara, in five years time there would be a shortage of sand.
The sentiment is clear: vested interests and bumbling bureaucracy need to be gotten out of the way
and efficiency needs to rule.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/joined-up-thinking-manifesto