antoin@eire.com

There is a big debate in Ireland about toll roads. A lot of people are very angry about the amount they have to pay, the toll plaza queues they have to endure and the fact that a lot of the cash is going into private hands. Senator Shane Ross’s website contains links to some of the on-line debates.

However, the government and private bodies involved are completely failing to engage. They aren’t participating and they are pretending they aren’t paying any attention.
(more…)

An Irish company, from Cork is featured in today’s Guardian for building cheap houses. A pity they couldn’t build some of these in Ireland.
(more…)

Comreg published the results of its consultation on postcodes in Ireland. They’ve received a lot of expressions of support for the idea.
(more…)

Aircoach, an Irish coach operator now lets you buy your tickets online and have them sent to your mobile phone. They are giving a 50 percent discount on airport tickets if you buy 30 online at a time. That’s a pretty good incentive to be a geek on the bus.
(more…)

A city is like a computer program - special care has to be taken to make things as easy as possible for new users. The new signage on the South Quays at Talbot Bridge in Dublin is a step towards making Dublin easy for visitors to get around.

This is a completely new type of sign for Dublin, and it has a number of good features. There are clear directions to common tourist destinations in Dublin. It isn’t festooned with advertisements. It is highly graffiti-proof. Best of all, it isn’t supposed to look twee and olde-worlde.
(more…)

Media Lab Europe (MLE) which was a joint venture between the Irish government and MIT is closing down as it can’t get any more money.
(more…)

GM’s vice chairman now has a blog. According to Neville Hobson, this is the first Fortune 100 company to do this. The interesting thing is not how revolutionary this blog is, but how ordinary it feels.
(more…)

My local Provisional Sinn Fein MEP, Mary-Lou McDonald has called for tighter restrictions on the sale of arms:

‘The EU Code of Conduct must be strengthened immediately, to prevent further abuses of human rights, especially in countries with questionable human rights records. Recent reports have shown that loopholes in the Code of Conduct have allowed weapons to be supplied to regimes such as China, Burma and Malaysia in this last year.’
(more…)

Joi Ito picked up on my contribution on a mailing list about what is happening there.
(more…)