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Sinead O'Sullivan

👤 Speaker
425 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

So I come at these problems, as you said, from an engineering perspective.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

I just happen to have been an engineer before as an economist.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

So this is a very natural framing for me.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

But what you're saying is exactly right.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

When you meet political leadership, France is a really good example of this.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

They have gone, they have spent years in the top, top, top institutions.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

Before they can move into the politics side of things, they have to, and they have this incredibly deep understanding of how complex systems work.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

When you see a failure in one part of the system, they intuitively understand that the solution is ultimately going to lie perhaps very far away from it because they understand the complexity of things in general.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

It is this kind of logic-based engineering background.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

Now,

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

We just don't have that.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

We have a very different type of, I mean, I would say in Ireland, and this is not a class thing, this is just a kind of, this is kind of an outside in looking at it fact that we don't have that kind of intellectual layer of politics because firstly, Ireland is, we're one step away from an agrarian economy, although if we didn't have these multinational tax issues.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

So a lot of our politics is local politics and it is rural.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

And it doesn't vibe with the institutional and intellectual thinking that we see in other places.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

We don't have the class system that Paris has.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

And my God, they do have a class system.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

So we're different.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

And there's no point in saying we should become the Nordics.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

We should become Paris.

The David McWilliams Podcast
The Premature State: Why Ireland Can’t Build Itself

But we need to become what we're not right now in Ireland.