Michael Moynihan: Delays and dysfunction — why we never get things done correctly in Cork

It should be activated when you see these phenomena in the flesh, but I find there’s a delayed reaction. For instance, when I was in the Grand Parade on Tuesday it was a simple enough matter to walk across to the river and look up to the gaping hole where the event centre is supposed to be.

And cast my mind back a few days to Bilbao and its Guggenheim Museum, and think ‘Why Don’t We Do It This Way’?

Some of the surface similarities between Cork and Bilbao are striking.

Back in the eighties, Bilbao’s main industries, such as iron, steel, and shipbuilding, were in decline with unemployment hitting 25% at one point; all along the river the environment was polluted, jammed up with gridlocked traffic and derelict warehouses.

Now the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, is identifiable all over the world, an eye-catching symbol that immediately reminds people of Bilbao. In fact, the city itself has given name to a recognisable phenomenon — the Bilbao effect, wherein significant cultural investment and eye-catching architecture combine to lift a struggling city economically.

There are valid questions as to whether this effect is real — or whether it’s even confined to Bilbao. One could argue there’s a Sydney (Opera House) effect, for instance, and nowadays there are rumblings that the rejuvenation of Bilbao is limited to the cool areas around the Guggenheim and does not extend out to the neglected outskirts of the city.

There’s no question about the expense of a project of this scale, however. According to Artnet News, a 2007 report published by the American Association of Museums stated the start-up costs for the Bilbao project were €195 million, and Beatriz Plaza, a professor of economics at the University of the Basque Country, itemised the fees: over €11m for the architect Frank Gehry, €6m for executive architect IDOM, €95m for construction, €23.4m to the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation to run the museum, €9.3m for the land, €42m to start the collection, and €28.7m for other operating costs.

(Context? Then Basque Minister for Culture, Joseba Arregi said at the time that the sum was less than the cost of a single kilometre of new highway.)

My eye was also drawn to one specific passage in that Artnet piece about the beginning of the project: “The Guggenheim Bilbao was the result of a partnership between the Guggenheim museum in New York and the governments of the city of Bilbao and the Basque region ... the (Basque) region responded by setting up new agencies to smooth its path from an industrial to a service economy.”

Here there may be a natural answer to the Why Don’t We Do It This Way game.

Readers may be expecting a rant focusing on the event centre, lolling unspoiled on North Main Street, as conclusive proof that we can’t have nice things, or to Pairc Ui Chaoimh as proof that when we have nice things they just cost too much.

Certainly, the event centre is an embarrassment, a farrago of missed deadlines and shameful photo-opportunities, an indictment of those responsible which is visible every time a person glances across the river from Barrack Street.

Yes, the ranting can be addictive.

But the event centre is also a very good example of something we see in other aspects of Irish life, the tactical use of partnership. It’s not up to us, says one stakeholder: we’re in partnership with others, and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. See?

Flooding

Look at the recent floods for another example, and ask a simple question.

Who’s in charge?

Start with the rain itself. A couple of weeks ago there was some criticism of Met Eireann for not issuing a red warning, with Tánaiste Micheál Martin saying as much in the Dáil on October 19; Met Eireann has since signalled its intention to shake up its warning systems.

This is instructive: Met Eireann is a sole trader in weather forecasting. No partnerships. No complications.

In the same contribution, however, the Tánaiste said: “There is an issue about continuing objections, I think, that lack balance and perspective in the process that is delaying many flood relief schemes across the country.”

This immediately pulls in different organisations.

Flood relief schemes are the province of the Office of Public Works (OPW). The works are carried out in the territory of local authorities such as Cork City Council. Objections involve An Bord Pleanála. Judicial reviews mean involving the legal system.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Or are we?

The OPW can be criticised sometimes for being slow to act, but it must have a free hand; it can’t if objections to schemes land into An Bord Pleanála, which surely heads the lengthy shortlist of dysfunctional state agencies. Local authorities have a foot in both camps, being responsible for major works while acting as an arbiter of planning applications — and all while working in partnership with the bodies mentioned, and others.

Because there are different bodies and organisations involved, ultimate responsibility is avoided. It’s not up to us, says one organisation: we’re working with them. The other crowd.

This happens at every level: in the floods themselves there are also complications, with local authority employees, members of An Garda Siochana, and — as seen in Midleton — members of the Defence Forces, all of them involved in helping people.

Some of these bodies want more organisations to get involved. New bodies, in fact. As reported here on October 24, acting Cork County Council chief executive Valerie O’Sullivan said there is currently a mix of too many agencies with differing controls of watercourses and it would be better if they were co-ordinated by one governing body.

Another organisation, another partnership. Why not?

We will have to return to some of the specific issues raised by the recent flooding. The basic question of whether Cork’s drainage system is fit for purpose (one former Lord Mayor doesn’t think it is). This suspicious need to blame everything on ‘objectors’. Cork City Council’s odd social media strategy over the Jazz Weekend, with particular reference to the floods

It’s doubtful if any of those investigations will answer the essential question — who’s in charge when it floods? — but I predict there’ll be quite a few partners involved.

Not partners in the Basque sense, creating something that gives a small city an identity recognised all over the world. No, our own form of partnership. where no-one is to blame for delays and dysfunction. And floods.