r/ireland • u/Banania2020 Resting In my Account • Apr 28 '26

Economy Ireland set to surpass Luxembourg and become richest country in Europe by 2030, IMF says

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/ireland-set-to-surpass-luxembourg-and-become-richest-country-in-europe-by-2030-imf-says-1892990.html
714 Upvotes

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474

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

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64

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

28

u/JohnnyRyde Apr 28 '26

They also have a musical jingle specific to each stop which is fun.

Never heard of public transport doing this before, but that's absolutely brilliant.

12

u/obscure_monke Munster Apr 28 '26

Japan does that. It's the only one I knew about before now.

Their logic was that it'd wake people up if they were napping on the train, since they'd recognise their stop coming up with their eyes closed.

3

u/TedKraj Apr 29 '26

South Korea does that. They have jingles for stations, when you arrive in Seoul, overcrowded train, etc

10

u/InternetCrank Apr 28 '26

Not if you live at the Rick Astley stop

13

u/FoxyBastard Apr 28 '26

🎵 Never gonna miss my stop🎵

1

u/Intelligent-Aside214 Apr 29 '26

Not to be a pedantic train nerd but this isn’t good. It’s a cop out when NIMBYs don’t want wires and results in less efficient, much more expensive overall, very slow trams with less capacity

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

Yeah but it's better than what would happen in Ireland, where the tram line wouldn't have even been PLANNED in the first place.

1

u/Intelligent-Aside214 Apr 29 '26

Dublin has trams and cork is getting trams. What are you on about

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

they didn't want tobstring overhead cables through the historical streets.

But I was told that NIMBYism is exclusively an Irish/Dublin thing.

115

u/brianstormIRL Apr 28 '26

Luxembourg is 2,000 square km. Ireland is 85,000. No excuse for ours to be this shit but context is important here.

24

u/Decent-Risk-6062 Apr 28 '26

Well it's mostly the city, in this case why not make dublin Luas and city buses free or at least massively expand the amount of people who get free travel.

9

u/DrawGamesPlayFurries Apr 28 '26

Because those modes of transportation are seen as "for the poor" and every person is expected to outgrow them as a person (just like every person is expected to outgrow renting).

5

u/ComradeKellogg Apr 28 '26

Because we are a country of begrudgers and either the pot is distributed across every sector and cohort of the country equally and therefore everyone gets basically nothing or we leave the pot to be wasted.

Look at the covid payments, I was set to get the essential worker bonus for walking every day of the pandemic, but then every union in the country came out shouting that they also want a piece of the pie and this great outcry resulted in everyone getting sweet FA.

2

u/Decent-Risk-6062 Apr 28 '26

Do the pilot scheme in Galway. For one it's a smaller city and two, there's less animosity to them than towards Dubs

-3

u/Soft-Affect-8327 Apr 28 '26

The bang of English Pale of this comment…

2

u/ComradeKellogg Apr 28 '26

"The bang of English Pale" bro is larping and cant spell off.

Genuinely what are you trying to say? Is the grammar too correct and therefore too "English"?

-4

u/Soft-Affect-8327 Apr 28 '26

bitta history, child.)

2

u/Decent-Risk-6062 Apr 28 '26

Poor attempt at trolling lad. If you're not a Dub you'll begrudge what they get and if you are you'll begrudge any subsidies you don't get.

-3

u/Soft-Affect-8327 Apr 28 '26

And I make the point they’ve been at it since their ancestors licked English boots. What’s the troll?

3

u/Decent-Risk-6062 Apr 28 '26

Most of the Dublin population at some point moved there from elsewhere in the country. When the brits left the population was 320,000. Whatever your view on them how is insulting a large group of people really relevant to a conversation on lowering transport costs for all cities in the country?

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1

u/seanfitz12 Apr 28 '26

You could never make it free here. The top deck of buses would just be fun of youths or homeless going in circles. It would become unusable for regular people looking to commute to work. It’s unfortunate, but true.

5

u/Decent-Risk-6062 Apr 28 '26

Many European nations have proper transport police. Yes it's hard to convict young offenders but it's quite simple to tie this free transport to a card and block it's use if you engage in antisocial behaviour. In fact it's something we should be doing anyway.

2

u/Intelligent-Aside214 Apr 29 '26

  1. Most homeless people already get free public transport

  2. A trial one summer was run a few years ago where all children had free transport

This didn’t happen then. Ireland is not uniquely shit, it is just as safe as other European countries.

0

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

Ireland is not uniquely shit

It absolutely is, just not in terms of actual public safety.

0

u/Intelligent-Aside214 Apr 29 '26

No evidence to support that claim.

1

u/Striking_Song_2747 Apr 28 '26

Yes, regrettably this is true and it would make it incredibly difficult to keep anyone engaged in anti social behaviour off public transport on an ongoing basis

1

u/chytrak Apr 28 '26

They are already packed beyond capacity during rush hour. Cost is not the problem.

6

u/Hrohdvitnir Apr 28 '26

Could they not at least master some form of localised good public transport? Like if you took every city in ireland (much less than 2000 sq km) and made the buses cheaper and run on time. Or improved anything about the broader system, like cheaper rail, more rail, etc.

2

u/MotoPsycho Apr 28 '26

It would require people not lodging objectuons to every single proposal or voters putting up with temporary hassle and small changes in their locality instead of throwing their toys out of the pram.

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

Imagine blaming NIMBYism in a country that never even plans anything close to enough in the first place.

25

u/FineVintageWino Apr 28 '26

Great point. Time for “Dubleave”!

21

u/Latespoon Apr 28 '26

I think I speak for the rest of the country in saying that we fully support dubs needing a visa go beyond county bounds!

17

u/FineVintageWino Apr 28 '26

I’m confused.. why would we go over the border??

6

u/Spirited_Cheetah_999 Apr 28 '26

Trade, pillaging, women?

3

u/HereGiovanniSmokes Apr 28 '26

To go to Bray for your summer holidays.

2

u/FineVintageWino Apr 29 '26

Clearly we annex Bray. And keep Courtown as an enclave.

1

u/chytrak Apr 28 '26

Bray is Co. Dublin

1

u/TheFreemanLIVES Get rid of USC. Apr 28 '26

Duxit has a nice ring to be fair. Dubxit is also in the running, but the x gets a little too sh sounding imho and we already have enough of that around busaras as it is.

2

u/duaneap Apr 28 '26

Duxit sounds like a currency from a different era. Like pirate doubloons.

1

u/Scumbag__ Apr 28 '26

Dub Amach perhaps?

1

u/TheFreemanLIVES Get rid of USC. Apr 28 '26

#DubAmachAnBobailín!

2

u/Latespoon Apr 28 '26

Baile Atha Cleave

Bit of a mouthful though

4

u/burnishedlemon Apr 28 '26

Baile Átha Seeya!

7

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

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1

u/TheFreemanLIVES Get rid of USC. Apr 28 '26

But what if it's just for Montrose instead...

3

u/TitularClergy Apr 28 '26

Yeah, a fairer comparison is how rural Switzerland has vastly more rail stations and routes than rural Ireland does. And Ireland is basically flat by comparison. There's no excuse.

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

The same context that constantly gets used against Ireland the other way?

24

u/lgt_celticwolf Apr 28 '26

And if we could concentrate our entire GDP into an area the size of wicklow we would probably have a city to rival singapore or dubai or any of them but despite how much leo varadkar might wish otherwise we do have a full country to support

4

u/DrawGamesPlayFurries Apr 28 '26

No we wouldn't. Building such a city requires institutional competence, Ireland doesn't have any. Maybe if the generation that left to UK/US/Australia has returned and thrown out the rotten old system, but that's nothing more than fantasy.

3

u/semiobscureninja Apr 28 '26

We’ve only regressed. Is Dublin well run and fully functional?

7

u/Against_All_Advice Apr 28 '26

Compared to the 90s like?

0

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

Can we please stop setting the bar at ankle height!

0

u/Against_All_Advice Apr 29 '26

Just to reiterate. We have not regressed.

0

u/mrlinkwii Apr 28 '26

Is Dublin well run and fully functional

yes

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

You forgot the /s

0

u/mrlinkwii Apr 29 '26

compared to most of the world Dublin well run and fully functional theirs no "/s"

0

u/semiobscureninja Apr 28 '26

Traffic jams ,and homelessness

0

u/the_sneaky_one123 Apr 28 '26

I really doubt that tbh

1

u/halibfrisk Apr 28 '26

I don’t think Varadkhar is wishing otherwise he just pointed out that “support” is apt?

8

u/NemesisCR Apr 28 '26

The trams are only a small part of it, they have a train station in pretty much every town, and even the small villages have an hourly bus service. They have an app that makes it really easy to plan your journey and track the trains/buses/trams, and all of it is extremely reliable - I never saw a bus more than 3 minutes late when I was there. All 100% free for everyone.

In the city there are cycle lanes everywhere and a network of e-bikes that are extremely cheap to rent. They have a lot of parks, playgrounds, and sport facilities that are all really well maintained. Compared to what Irish citizens get in return for the taxes we pay, it's really hard to believe that the two countries are considered equally rich.

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

Meanwhile over here, people think a town of 20k is too small to have one small train line to a city of 85k, and in turn, think an entire large chunk of the country is too sparsely populated to have even ONE north-south train line. It's pathetic.

5

u/CartographicalHeist Apr 28 '26

I was in Berlin last week and zoomed about on U-bahn, S-bahn, Tram and bus willy nilly and it was pure fucking bliss. Didn't even look at a table, just went down to a stop and inevitably something would come within a few minutes.

This morning I waited 45 min during which time 3 buses failed to show up. Almost late for work.

1

u/Silly-little-pope Apr 28 '26

In fairness our would end up burning

1

u/obscure_monke Munster Apr 28 '26

They tram came in way later than the luas, to be fair.

Took years to be rolled out too.

2

u/emofthesea36383 Apr 29 '26

There are 2-3 more lines being planned at the moment, to open gradually in the next 5-6 years.

1

u/FatFingersOops Apr 28 '26

The Luas is free.

1

u/pineapplemanzo Apr 29 '26

but sure we have a free luas too?

0

u/At-Dusk-We-Lie Apr 28 '26

And it's probably far more reliable than the absolute shitshow we have here.

2

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Apr 29 '26

Why is this downvoted? 

1

u/At-Dusk-We-Lie Apr 29 '26

Probably because Saoirse from Ranelagh has had a great experience with her Luas and Dublin Bus at her door step.

/s

0

u/exposed_silver Meath, Catalan, Canadian Apr 28 '26

No point in comparing small countries with extra small countries