This is not a recommendation, and the value of investments can fall as well as rise and all that, but I suggest it might be worth keeping an eye on the share price of a company like newly-floated Applegreen.
Why? Because apart from any other consideration, Breakfast Roll Man has begun to rumble again, and unless either the global economy comes off the rails anytime soon, or we lose the run of ourselves again (neither of which can be ruled out), it looks as though he may be back for a while.
This is good news for the likes of forecourt operators such as Applegreen as Breakfast Roll Man needs coffee, fast food and petrol/diesel to fuel his engine.
It’s also good news for the overall economy as his return signals the revival of the construction sector which sources much of its raw material in Ireland. And as Breakfast Roll Man himself spends a fair proportion of his wages in his local area (if he’s not still trying to pay down boom time debts).
But it’s principally and disproportionately good news for the economy of the Greater Dublin Area.
The sheer range and scale of the commercial and industrial developments planned for the Dublin region over the next three to four years will draw white vans, laden with construction workers, down the shiny new motorways to the Capital from all over the country and from Northern Ireland.
They’ll come, because there aren’t sufficient skilled or experienced building workers in Dublin itself; because the motorways will get them to the city in a couple of hours from many parts of the country; and because proportionately, little enough construction activity taking place in the provincial cities, towns and countryside where they live.
Consider, the scale of the office developments planned for both sides of the River Liffey in Dublin’s docklands alone, including the new Central Bank building; high rise residential and commercial towers; and the wholesale redevelopment of the Boland’s Mill, Tara Street Station and Department of Health sites, amongst other projects.
Consider also the major planned commercial and residential developments across the suburbs ranging from Cherrywood and Sandyford in the South to the DAA’s new Airport City in the north.
And consider the number of high tech data centres, pharmaceutical plants and life science facilities, that are planned in an outer suburban arc from Tallaght to Swords, and it’s clear cranes will soon again puncture the capital’s skyline.
We should, I suppose, be grateful for all this investment and employment generation wherever it is located. It’s also difficult for any government of a small and low-density populated island such as our own, to reverse a trend towards a huge preponderance of economic activity in the capital city region.
But the government’s Capital Plan, published during the week, will do very little to mitigate this self-perpetuating development.
The single largest capital project, the Dublin North Metro, will absorb one tenth of the government’s planned direct €27bn investment over the next six years and it’s still not clear why an efficient rapid transit bus service would not service the need just as well.
There’s no funding for a motorway linking Cork and Limerick, our second and third largest cities respectively; none for the by-pass that would relieve a choking Galway; none to revitalise Cork’s decaying city docklands; and little to fund major new third-level developments outside the Capital, that might draw additional students from home and abroad and more of the kinds of industry that attaches to vibrant educational institutions.
Breakfast Roll Man is back. If you live in or close to Dublin, get ready to join the queue at your local service station forecourt and for longer delays on the M50 and the city’s feeder roads. If you don’t live in Dublin...
