Is Ireland the worst run country in Europe?

The national children’s hospital, originally budgeted at €650 million for completion in 2020, reached €2.24 billion by 2025, an overrun of over 220 per cent.

Is Ireland the worst run country in Europe? How can we waste so much public money so quickly in so many ways? Has there ever been a country that has achieved so little from so much spending? Apologies in advance as this article will be a little heavy on the numbers because the numbers are shocking. The MetroLink, planned since 2000 – more than a quarter of a century ago – has consumed €200 million of public money without starting any construction. It is now projected to cost between €9.5 billion and €23 billion, with a low-end cost per km of €505 million against Madrid’s equivalent of €64 million–€72 million. How can it cost eight times more to build a Metro in Ireland than in Spain?

But it’s not just Metros where public money is wasted.

Luas extensions ran nearly three times over budget. The Dublin Tunnel cost almost double its original estimate. A planned Dart underground, shelved after €47 million was spent on reports, was replaced by a planned Luas extension toward Dublin Airport, which has also since been abandoned. A recent report claims that Ireland operates the most inefficient public transport in Europe . It’s hard to argue with that.

Things get even worse when we look at healthcare spending. Ireland’s population is much younger than the rest of Europe, therefore we should be spending less per head on health because the young don’t, typically, get sick. Yet Ireland’s per capita healthcare spend in 2024 was €7,394.85, the second highest in the EU. The EU average is €5,005.50. For all that money, Ireland’s health outcomes rank 15th out of 43 European countries. We should be number one or two.

The national children’s hospital, originally budgeted at €650 million for completion in 2020, reached €2.24 billion by 2025 – an overrun of over 220 per cent. Despite Ireland spending far more on healthcare than the European average, young Irish nurses and doctors are leaving the country in huge numbers for better conditions elsewhere. How can this happen? Surely the more we spend, the better the conditions for the essential workers?

Take a breath.

What about State spending on housing?

We have a housing crisis. The traditional economic cause for a crisis is failure to build enough homes. This is usually because we are not spending enough on housing. But, wait for it, Ireland spends proportionately the second highest amount on housing across the EU. We spend the most on housing benefit at €755 per person, far ahead of second-place Finland at €484. Annual housing budgets have run at €8 billion–€9 billion for each of the past three years, up from €1 billion in 2015.

What have we to show for all this spending?

• House prices rising at close to 10 per cent per year

• Rents up 115 per cent since 2010

• Record homelessness of 17,308 people

• Only 20 per cent of working people able to afford to rent the average apartment nationally

• A combined salary of €108,000–€146,000 required to afford a two-bed apartment

• The second fewest homes per capita in Europe

Ireland’s abject failure in housing is not the result of a lack of ambition. There have been many housing plans announced over the past decade (including Housing for All, Delivering Homes Building Communities, Housing First, Revised National Planning Framework). The National Development Plan has allocated €36 billion to housing between 2026 and 2030. Yet house/apartment construction is still lagging behind targets every year. The problem isn’t a lack of ambition, it is a lack of competence.

Even the construction industry, the main recipients of the money, don’t rate the State. In a 2025 industry survey 24 per cent of contractors rated government housing policies as “least effective”; none rated them “most effective”. Rather than building housing, local councils are outbidding first-time buyers for new and second-hand homes, using the State’s financial power to outbid local people.

There is no cost control in Ireland. In fact there isn’t much control of any sort – cost or quality. Money comes in, it is spent and no one seems to care about what we are getting for this spending. Fiscal incontinence is contagious. When one department or project gets away with overruns, it gives permission for the next one to do likewise, or if a budget is not absolute, discipline disappears.

At its core, our problem is a lack of seriousness. No one is responsible or answerable to anyone. When was the last time you heard that a senior public servant lost their job or got demoted for missing targets?

Ireland’s problem is we have too much money and this is leading to an absence of restraint. Money, gushing in from the American multinationals, is – to put it indelicately – being pissed up against a wall. Corporation tax receipts hit €32.9 billion in 2025, a 700 per cent increase from the €4.6 billion received in 2014. These taxes amount to 31 per cent of Ireland’s total tax take – a dramatic rise from the mere 4 per cent it represented in the pre-Tiger era (1984). This windfall could be as large as €40 billion by 2030.

The consequences of this windfall for the exchequer are clear. The budget swung from a deficit of more than €53 billion in 2010 to a surplus of €12.4 billion in 2025. Corporation tax receipts are heavily concentrated among a small number of firms and are volatile. The proportion of the windfall being spent has risen from 60 per cent to nearly 90 per cent.

If we were to take out the volatile corporation tax, the Irish state would be spending about €14 billion more than it is taking in. This huge waste is driving inflation, which is pushing up the cost of living for everyone while pushing downwards the quality of life for the citizen of what looks on paper like a very rich country.

Ireland needs restraint. Public project managers must be made accountable. What about a bonus for managers if they bring a project in under – or even within – budget? A reward for prudence. Or penalising managers of public funds who preside over overruns? This is how things work in the real world – excel spreadsheets are deployed and hard budgets are normal.

While many Irish politicians sling ideological accusations at each other, the real issue is management – boring, run-of-the-mill management. The issue in Ireland isn’t between left or right. It is much more profound: it is between care and contempt. People who spend other people’s money in such a wasteful way are contemptuous of the citizenry. Would a bit of care be too much to ask?