Is there any point in the war on drugs?

There is never going to be any ideal outcome to any drugs policy. If you legalise drugs more people will have access to them. If you criminalise drugs you send it underground with all that involves.
I come from the legalisation side of the argument. But I'm open-minded. Were I to hear any sensible argument for making drugs illegal I would change my mind.
The huge drugs haul off the Cork coast must make the 'criminalisers' sit down and have a serious think. We have imprisoned hundred and thousands of people for drug trafficking. We are going to build more prisons. We have people killing each other on the streets. We have all sorts of draconian legislation to stop the trade.
I wonder if the people who advocate criminalisation have any realistic goal in mind. Do they actually believe that state power can stop the trade in drugs?
The policy has been a total failure. Both here and across the world. At any given point, of course, you could argue that the reason for failure is that the state hasn't allocated enough resources, hasn't been tough enough.
So let's say that here in Ireland we double the number of gardai to around 25,000. Let's say we double the number of prisoners to around 6,000. Let's say that we set aside habeas Corpus and we bring in internment. Let's say we do all that.
Does anyone believe, in their heart of hearts, that the trade in illegal drugs will stop? I know it won't but I wonder if, deep down, our politicians and senior gardai believe it.
I wonder too if the 'criminalisers' aren't psychopaths to some extent.
A psychopath is a person who has no insight into, or care for, the consequences of their actions. The people who advocate making drugs illegal are motivated, one hopes, by the desire to save people from the disaster of drug addiction. After that single humanitarian impulse all morality can, it seems, be set aside.
I'm talking about the increasing tendency of the 'criminalisers' to blame everyone else for the negative impact of drug trafficking.
Cocaine users are blamed for young people in this city killing each other and for the drugs gangs we have. But the fact is that is is entirely foreseeable that a ban on drugs would have these consequences.
The ban makes drugs more valuable. The more the ban is enforced, the more valuable the drug becomes. Criminalisation involves the transfer of enormous wealth to organised crime.
In underclass areas it also transfers power and influence to these people. It undermines civil society.
The ban destabilises the countries from where the drugs come. In Afghanistan and Colombia, primary sources for heroin and cocaine, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or turned into refugees in the wars for the drugs fields.
At home, whole generations from some communities are thrown into conflict with the state even as others die from drug addiction. They die anyway even though the whole point of the ban is to save them.
And yet, through all the human misery that they have created, the 'criminalisers' trudge grimly on, calling for more prisons, more detention time, more drugs tests, more powers for the police, more ships and boats, more controls on travel. More, more, more.
The point of all this is to stop the supply of illegal drugs. It has completely failed.

The mayor of where?

The Green Party has secured the idea of an elected mayor for Dublin before 2011 as part of the coalition with Fianna Fail. The idea is that we will have a strongman who will knock heads and get Dublin working as a unit.
It's a complete reversal of Green ideology which tends to favour consensus rather than strong men. The party itself didn't have a leader until 2001. But to be fair, the idea is to invigorate and empower local democracy. And so we will have, like New York and London, a directly elected mayor with executive powers.
The big problem is that there is no clue as to what the new mayor will be mayor of. The present mayor is elected by Dublin City Council and the problem is that Dublin City Council is nothing of the sort.
The present Dublin City Council covers around only half the population of County Dublin and leaves out huge swathes of the city itself such as Dún Laoghaire, Dundrum, Tallaght, Clondalkin, Lucan and Blanchardstown. If we are to have a Dublin City mayor, the whole city is going to have to be included or there is little point to the exercise.
This means serious local government reform in Dublin. The last major reorganisation in the city created the new counties of Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown. Their existence has not set the world alight and they command little local loyalty or identity.
The Programme for Government says nothing about all this but we know that the Green Party favours more local councils to go with the new stronger mayor. However, the last reorganisation was a major task in terms of legislation and logistics. We can't wait for that, we can't afford it and it's not necessary.
The new mayor should cover the whole of County Dublin and should be accountable to a new Dublin Assembly. District councils should be set up across Dublin to serve local areas. The present four local authorities should remain as municipal entities to provide services at an economic cost to the new assembly and the district councils. The number of representatives to these bodies should be small, perhaps 10 for local councils and 20-30 for the Assembly. There might be a case for growing a Dublin Assembly to a Greater Dublin Assembly to include very near urban areas such as Bray and Leixlip.
The people of Dublin would then have workable local government that would serve them on a citywide and local basis.
Finally, there used to be a class of character you would meet on the barstools of Ireland back in the 1980s who would declare that the solution to Ireland's problems was a dictatorship. The dictator would use force to implement the policies the guy on the bar stool agreed with. It was simple and cosy.
Some Green TDs cited the bould 'Red Ken' in London as an example of what a progressive strong mayor could achieve. This is slightly daft as there's no knowing what make of politician the electorate might favour. George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe and even Adolf Hitler were elected too, you know.

Labour should be green with envy

I’m sick to the teeth of all those letters to the papers accusing the Greens of a sell-out. These people seem to prefer protest to power.
Here's an admission. I actually voted for the Greens and I'm glad they went into Government.
Over the next five years John Gormley (no relation of mine) and Eamonn Ryan will have the power to do a load of small things that can make a very considerable difference to the environment in Ireland.
For example, the Greens will be able to extend the Greener Homes scheme which allows people to put renewable energy solutions into their homes. This scheme has been a real winner because it encourages people to invest their own money into reducing their long-term bills and reducing pollution for everyone into the bargain.
John Gormley, the new Environment Minister, will be able to get to work on the minutiae. He will be able to consider, for example, whether wood pellet stoves are really the way we want to go. He can extend the grants, he can make them bigger, he can make up new ones.
The Labour Party, on the other hand, emerges from the election with their honour intact. For the next five years they can't be blamed for anything.
Take, for example, the RAPID programme. This programme has the power to completely change the life experiences for the people living in Ireland's poorest areas. It's a brilliant scheme which brings all the local agencies from the local authorities to the gardai to the politicians together to solve the problems of tens of thousands of men, women and children living on the very margins of our society.
But in the coalition of the PDs and Fianna Fail, the RAPID scheme has been woefully under-resourced. Is that a surprise? After all, as Michael McDowell said, it is the small party's tail that wags the big Fianna Fail dog. And the PDs don't really 'do' poor people.
But Labour does. That's what it says on the tin. Labour, over the last 10 years, could have had themselves in Government but they chose purity instead. And now Labour can't be blamed for the failings in the RAPID programme. Isn't that useful?
Fianna Fail have won the votes of Labour's natural constituency - the working classes and the lower middle classes. Fianna Fail delivered lower personal taxes, agreements with the unions and expanding employment. They were Fianna Fail successes - Labour delivered nothing.
What of Fianna Fail's failures? They didn't sort out the health service, solve the crime problems or provide affordable homes.
But you know what? Neither did Labour. Every Fianna Fail failure is Labour's failure too because for the last 10 years the Irish Labour Party has contributed absolutely nothing to Ireland. They did this because they apparently wanted to punish Fianna Fail. You could burst into tears right now with the sheer stupidity of it all.
Here's another admission. When I had done voting Green, I transferred my vote to Labour. I was sort of hoping that some sanity would prevail and that Labour would think more about getting its policies enacted rather than what the Irish Times letter writers would say.
That said, the party I voted for is in Government and I feel all the better for it.

Getting into bed with Ikea

I'm dying to see the shuttle bus from the new IKEA to the centre of Ballymun. Will it have a roof rack for the flat packs? Will Ballymuners be able to bring the tables and lockers onto the bus?
The An Bord Pleanala decision to grant permission to IKEA in Ballymun runs to over 5,000 words and includes 30 conditions.
In my opinion, the arrival of IKEA is a victory for the market over common sense. Building a ring road around Dublin and then slapping up shopping malls around it was always going to lead to traffic chaos. And on every other section of the M50 that's exactly what you get.
The conditions attached to the planning permission for IKEA are a desperate attempt to stave off the dreaded gridlock. It can't open until 11am in the morning. It can't close until late at night. The upgrade of the M50 must be finished. The junction must be reconstructed in a myriad of different ways to stop cars queuing on the M50.
There's even a plan to ensure that customers won't bring their cars at all. The planners have insisted that IKEA have electronic shopping and home delivery in place. This is so the working classes will be able to arrive by bus and have their order delivered. The middle classes can leave their Dalkey tractors parked at home while they shop online.
Some chance!
There is now a widespread acceptance that this form of development is bad news. It leaves the population chronically dependent on cars, encourages urban sprawl and damages town centres. The Government knows this too and that's why they limited the size of superstores.
But IKEA was too attractive a proposition to resist. The authorities feared losing out on jobs to Newry, so the cap on the size of stores was lifted. And now it will be open season for the multinationals who can stack-em-up, sell-em-cheap and live on very small margins.
One thing that confuses me is the idea of the 500 new jobs that IKEA will create. Is it possible that the people of Dublin will be so motivated by IKEA to spend enough to employ an extra 500 people in the furniture trade? Is it not possible that some of these jobs will replace those in other furniture outlets that won't be able to take the heat?
The upside is that these jobs will be in the Ballymun area. I've no doubt that the local agencies already have plans to train up local people for these jobs. Local people working locally is a very sound environmental and social policy.
But every time someone employed from Ballymun gets a job in the new IKEA store increases the risks for the area in the event of something going wrong. Decision makers need to spread the risk across the Northside rather than confine it to a specific area.
I think An Bord Pleanala has made a bad decision. The planners don’t believe it will set a precedent and feel that if their conditions are met the outcome will be positive.
I note that the Green Party specifically objected to the IKEA plan – not to the store but to its scale. Now that they have influence in Government, it will be interesting to see how similar planning applications are dealt with in the future.

We're nicking their water!

It is the duty of this column to bring you news of impending rows. The big row that is now brewing is over the plan to take water from the Shannon system and to pump it to Dublin.
This mightn't seem like a big deal to you now but it's going to be right up there with the Tara and Corrib gas schmozzles. It's going to be a major headache for any future Fianna Fail/Green coalition because it presses all the wrong buttons. The lobsided development between east and west, the costs of headlong economic growth, the scarcity of resources, the need to charge for water...all long-term time bombs.
The problem is that Dublin needs water and there's no more to be had locally. Over the past twenty years our water masters have fought the good fight. Demand and supply of water in Dublin has been on a knife edge. The two major water plants at Ballymore Eustace and Leixlip have been expanded to their limit. A massive pipe replacement program has reduced leakage from 40% to 30%. Without water meters (and what a row that will be!) there is a practical limit to any more gains from fixing pipes.
To put some figures on it, at the moment (2005) Dublin's peak demand is 558 Megalitres per day. We can sustainably supply 509 megalitres per day. Do the maths and it comes out negative. We are adding splishes and sploshes from various sources to stave off disaster but basically we have a big problem.
The bottom line is that we need water and there are only two viable ways to get it. One is to suck it out of the Irish Sea. Despite the fact that we nearly destroy everything we eat with prodigious quantities of salt, not even the Irish can drink salt water. We would need to build a big desalination plant and distill the water. It would be an environmental nightmare and, given that water never stops falling here, would make Ireland the laughing stock of the world.
The other option is to take water from Ireland's biggest river system, the Shannon. This means running a pipe from Lough Ree to Dublin. It's a simple, viable, cost-effective solution.
But the damn natives are restless. Already environmental jihadists from Lanesborough at the top of the lake, to Athlone at the bottom and headquartered around Ballymahon in the middle have declared it their life's mission that the Dubs will not drink one drop of Shannon water.
The lake and the river are a major source of employment in the area and much of the plans for the future revolve around tourism. The fear is that the plan will lead to a significant drop in the levels of the lake in the summer. Dublin City Council denies this, citing a study showing that water levels won't be affected.
The locals don't believe it and I'm not sure I do either. It seems obvious that the biggest demand for water will occur just when river levels at at their lowest. And what will happen in 15 or twenty years time when Dublin outgrows this capacity?
Let the battle commence.

Dublin: The city of Ozymandians

I am not given to quoting poetry. Don't know much about it, really. But sometimes a great poet captures an observation and it can't be improved upon. This poem is 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Have a read...

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Quite. I mention this because the latest census release now shows that the average Dublin City household comprises of exactly 2.5 people. This is down from 3.0 in 1990 and 4.0 in 1960.
So we're not living together as much as we did and for lots of reasons. We're getting divorced. We're rearing children in single-parent families. We have more widows and widowers. Our children are fewer and more mobile.
Also, we have been accumulating assets at a fiercesome rate. The Irish penchant for buying house has never abated.
One of the things that surprised me from the released of the stats is that fewer grown-up 'children' are living at home. The number of people in their 20s and 30s living at home in Ireland has fallen nearly 10 per cent between 2002 and 2006. This at a time when house price inflation was said to be confining children to their native homes forever.
We have been making money and we have been turning it into assets via cheap mortgages. For sure, many have been left behind but a huge number of us are empire building.
At the same time the traditional family is under pressure. It's going out of fashion. Fewer than one in five households in Dublin City are now made up of the traditional family of husband, wife and children. Cohabiting is on the increase but one just a third of them have children. Of the trad families with children, two kids is the most popular number.
So we have been getting ourselves rich over the past fifteen years. We been cutting deals and talking house prices over dinner. We have had less time for kids or each other.
The question is: what are we going to do with the goodies? What will become of these assets? We think we are so hard headed, building up our stash in bricks.
But the fact is that most of us will never sell these gaffs. We won't asset strip them and head off on the journey of a lifetime. We'll give them to the kids.
We'll build it all up and then we will return to the dust without ever seeing the cash. This is sort of reassuring - we're not doing it for the money after all.
Like Ozymandias our little empires will wither and dissapate with us. There are, however, two possible negative outcomes we should ponder. Firstly, the next generation might be spoiled by the free assets we will leave them. And secondly, we seem to be much better at building houses than households.

Pre-nupts: hedging your bets

At the time of the divorce referendum, the death of marriage was predicted by those opposed to divorce. Even those in favour had to admit that the institution was wobbling, and that the introduction of divorce wouldn't help.
And right enough, many more marriages are ending in failure. The number of divorced couples nearly doubled between the censuses of 2002 and 2006. Many more have been separated and others are not getting married at all.
However, the development missed by all sides in the divorce wars has been the demand that marriage be extended to various other parts of the population. Getting married, if not staying married, is still very popular.
Marriage is a two-sided pact. The practical end is a legal contract which commits the contractees to all sorts of financial and property commitments. The other end is the ideal of a universal institution designed to elevate the idea of partnership and secure the rearing of children.
The two new claims for marriage come from the live-in couples and the gay community. They mainly want the legal end of things as many of both groups are left high and dry when a relationship ends or a partner dies. The answer to this has been civil partnerships and there is widespread support for this across society as a measure of justice.
So for some people we have had to address the risk of not getting married. And now, it seems, we have to address the risk for those who actually do want to get married.
Last month an expert legal group recommended to the Government that pre-nuptial agreements be recognised by the state.
Many on the traditional side of the house will feel that pre-nuptial agreements are another attack on the institution of marriage. They're probably right. We're getting to the stage where everyone will be able to design their own marriages.
That sounds fair enough but it is the end of marriage as a universally recognised institution. What is the point if everyone can make up their own?
At the moment pre-nupts have no legal status. And even if the Government make the recommended change, they still won't have legal force. It will simply allow the courts to use the pre-nupts as a guide when divvying up the spoils of marriage.
I think I'm with the conservatives on this one. A pre-nuptial agreement is just hedging your bets. It is avoiding commitment.
I have argued before that marriage of itself can't guarantee anything and we know this from the break-ups, violence, cheating, etc. But many people in our society do have a deep respect for marriage and believe that it can help to make relationships last. Those people want to enter into an institution that is respected and durable.
Pre-nuptial agreements make a joke of the whole thing. It is the outworking of our feckless and shallow consumer society where people want to know the price of everything without seeing the value of anything.
If a man and a woman want to enter into a legal contract to share their lives with an agreement on how to split the goodies when it all goes wrong...then that's grand.
But don't call it marriage.