I pointed out to someone that the children's hospital cost less than 10% of the HSE budget for THIS YEAR to shock and amazement! People think €2.6b on something tangible is a disgrace, but €26b is well spent 🤷🏻♂️ and demanding more. I'm not saying it's value for money, but perspective needed sometimes.
The horrible habit we have of obsessing over small items on the bill while ignoring massive problems really galls me. We as a country as shittin money, I don't care about a bike shed.
It wasn't just a bike shed though, it was 200 year old hand cut stone footpaths and 350 year old drains that had to be replaced on a listed building that made it so expensive. Same with Clontarf to City Centre project "€70m for a bike lane" when the entire infrastructure was modernised and replaced.
I'm no quantity surveyor, I have no clue what a bike shed should cost. I think most of the country would also lack this skill, and yet here we are, giving our opinions on it.
Indeed an perhaps the OPW should have responded as to why a bike shed (that doesn't even keep bikes dry, according to users) should cost more than building a 3 bed house.
Part of the problem, it was a permanent shelter structure designed for parking bikes, along with sensitive architectural & conservation works, not a "shed," as many people commenting (especially opposition TDs!) suggested, deliberately so too IMO.
I agree that it sounds highly priced, and OPW needs to justify that, but people on social media and in the press simplify it to a "bike shed", a security "hut" or a cycle lane. When actually it's a lot more and designed to last 30, 50, 75+ years in some cases.
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