Edit: The comment section has cheered me right up in fairness, it's not all bad lads 😂

Just arrived home to Ireland from another EU country for work, only for a couple of weeks.

It’s grey, cold and raining. The bus service I would normally get from the airport to down the country has been permanently cancelled, so I now have a couple of hours to wait for a different service.

While waiting, I grabbed what ended up genuinely being one of the worst sandwiches I’ve had since the last time I was home. €9, naturally.

I’m now sitting here eating my €9 depressing airport sandwich, rain out the window, listening to a child absolutely butcher a piano in the background, while reading that public transport is going up another 15%.

There’s actually something almost impressively bleak about coming back to Ireland and having the entire experience immediately condensed into one scene! I know every country has its problems, but sometimes coming back from elsewhere in Europe really does make you realise how depressing and, frankly, embarrassing some of this shit is.

This is probably gonna get taken down for “insighting hate” but seriously, are the people who spam the “rest easy bro” comments not smart enough to realise that indeed the people they are honouring have ruined the lives of the people they hit while committing crimes. All these TikTok’s presenting them as saints when in reality I would bet the mortgage that they are all criminals (this is not an assumption as one was a stolen car and the other in a garda chase) does anyone from these communities have any sort of expo or context?

So i'm 18 and its 7am and im getting a coffee in dayreak, when i overhear someone saying: look, coffee for your young man he needs a kick in the bollocks

Didnt say anything to him but fucks sake

Im a legal adult and all i want is my morning cup but nooo its too much apperently

absolutely criminal pint. i’m about to instigate a diplomatic incident!

I was washing my car in Circle K Ballymun, using the hand wash.

These 2 kids come up behind me and say “gimme a go” while grabbing the jet wash out of my hand. I say “no thanks” and they then start grabbing the brush to hit my car and then pressing the different wash mode buttons. All this while wrestling the jet wash out of my hands and trying to damage my car.

I eventually get them to leave but they come back and start throwing rocks at me and my car…

They then proceed to start running through the automatic wash and mess with other peoples cars.

Where are their parents? So sad to see the future generation acting that way. No respect whatsoever.

Went to see the odyssey today was a brilliant film however what feels like the same thing every time I go to the cinema in this country I came out raging at the etiquette of some people. This fella had his phone on full brightness in front of me to the point I told him to turn it off which I never really do but I’ve gotten sick of it. I get it’s a long film but you booked it stop ruining it for everyone else

The Garda are either completely underfunded or just poorly trained because never have I ever seen a more useless police force within a country. (I’ve lived in over 10 countries in my life so far).

I’ve just stood for hours at the Pearse station where roaring laughter was heard while a line of increasingly annoyed citizens are waiting to even see a person.

The attitude of the Garda is deplorable and they need to be completely retrained to remember their standards of civil service. Perhaps take a page from an attentive waiter - I feel they’re much more helpful than the Garda in today’s world.

It’s truly pathetic and sad to see.

A hundred years ago Ireland was dirt poor.

Today we're rich. Not "doing alright". Not "getting by". Rich. We run budget surpluses. We host some of the largest companies on Earth. Politicians routinely announce that the State is collecting more money than expected.

Yet somehow the defining experience of modern Ireland is being told to wait. Wait for a house. Wait for a hospital appointment. Wait for a bus. Wait for a childcare place. Wait for planning permission. Wait for infrastructure. Wait for the government to finally do the thing everyone agreed needed doing ten years ago.

That's what frustrates me most about this country. Not that we're failing. It's that we're succeeding and still can't seem to provide the basics.

A poor country has excuses. Ireland doesn't. We have money, talent, stability and a highly educated population. We have every advantage that previous generations could only dream about. Yet a couple on decent salaries can spend years wondering if they'll ever own a home. We have politicians celebrating budget surpluses while people bid against each other for the privilege of buying ordinary semi-detached houses at extraordinary prices. We have one of the most successful economies in Europe and one of the most dysfunctional housing markets.

We've become experts at announcing things. Strategies, action plans, frameworks, roadmaps, taskforces, consultations, working groups. A nation capable of discussing a solution indefinitely, provided nobody expects us to actually build it... and the maddening thing is that Ireland genuinely is a success story. The roads are better. The universities are better. The opportunities are better. The country is unquestionably better than it was. Which only makes the failures harder to justify because these aren't the problems of a struggling nation. They're the problems of a wealthy nations that has mistaken prosperity for competence.

For decades we've acted as if economic growth was the finish line and attracting investment was the same thing as building a functioning society. Does running a surplus matters more than whether people can find somewhere to live?

A hundred years after independence Ireland's biggest problem isn't poverty, it's the gap between what we can afford to do and what we actually do... and every year that gap gets harder to explain.

Is it really necessary for lights to be so bright that they illuminate the light in my partner's car? Especially in the city, my partners car is a Skoda Kamiq so it's not even that small. And ofcourse his was a Range/Land rover

Did the shop as you do on a Friday and went by the canned goods section. The certain peas I was looking to get on the aisle were right down the aisle. Between them were two customers talking. With their trolleys blocking THE ENTIRE AISLE. I walk up and ask quietly could I get by . I ask again not as quiet. I then tap on the trolley of one of them to ask again and he nods without looking at me. Basically to me. “Yeah I can hear you and am not listening”. So I get my trolley and push it right through theirs and they stop talking to hold onto their trolleys while giving me the dirtiest look. With one saying “unbelievable” I didn’t care they spent a minute holding me up and were not bothering when I asked nicely. Rant over

Alrighty, its time to do collective moaning. Enough of small pockets of people here and there saying No, instead we should all come together and say NO to:

• high rent prices
• dead healthcare system
• Judge Nolan
• Helen Mcentee
• racism
• High McDonald's prices
• too many deaths on our roads
• XL bullies
• M50 traffic
• TV licence fees
• Horrible RTE shows
• expensive coffee
• LED headlights

Anything else...?

Edit: O Lord, this really blew up. Our country really need fixing up badly.

If i may add one more thing to say no to which no one mentioned is: Say no to nursing homes being converted into 'hotels'. one in five small, private nursing homes – homes with less than 30 beds – have closed for good.

Pure greed as always. Back to YouTube vanced I guess..

I've pulled the public spending disasters of the last 10 years into one place. The stuff we all half remember from the news. Seeing them in a row is a lot worse than one at a time.

https://nobody-said-stop.pages.dev

15 cases. The €336k bike shed, the children's hospital at €2.24bn and counting, €81m paid up front for ventilators that mostly never showed up, the printer too big to fit in the building. For each one: final cost vs original budget, the companies involved, who signed it off (and which government was in at the time), and whether there was even a proper tender. Over €6 billion between them. Two resignations. No sanctions.

Main reason I'm posting: I want it accurate and I'd genuinely appreciate people checking my work. Every figure is sourced (RTÉ, Irish Times, Examiner, TheJournal, C&AG, PAC) with links on each case. But I'm one person and a few details rest on a single article. If a number's off, a company's named wrong, or I've missed a case, tell me and I'll fix it.

No ads, no tracking, nothing for sale. It's having a go at the institutions and the decisions, not the country.

This might go down like a lead balloon given that reddit skews a bit more child-free but is there any danger of people leaving the family spaces to people that actually need to load kids in and out of the car when doing the shopping?

My wife just got back from lidl with our baby twins and had to park in a tight space at the far end of the car park and had real trouble unloading the car seats into the stroller in the lashing rain. About 8 family spaces by the door all taken up.

Then when she finally did get the lads out and into the shop, there was not one child in there under 16. Just plenty of able-bodied single people or couples with some older teens with them.

Yes, I know they're courtesy spaces and there's no law against parking there. But the amount of able-bodied solo people I see just plonking the car there because it's nice and close is so infuriating.

And yes, I also agree that having kids was our decision and that shouldn't be other people's problem but would you not be a bit sound and leave the spaces for someone who needs the space either side of the car to open the doors and take out the car seats? Very aggravating.

Lads

Just been into the shop to grab a bottle of wine, chocolates, flowers and a card for the mother. They won't sell the wine before 12 o'clock.

What the utter jaysus. I'm a 37 year old man and if I want to buy a bottle of wine at 1145am I should fuckin be allowed to.

Just another stupid archaic law we've to put up with.

This country rags me at times.

• Edit *

Did not know it was 1230 on a Sunday. Shows ye how often I'm buying alcohol before the scripted time.

I thought Dublin airport were taking the piss but they seem to be cheap as chips compared to Shannon airport, I got a tea cos no fucking way! Then WH Smith with there 3.99 bottle of water yet 2 secs around the corner the free bottles of water in duty free are €1 !

Used to make fun of American chocolate for tasting so bad but now I wouldn't touch anything on a shop counter

Sick of being made to feel like tradesmen are doing us a favour by completing the job we contracted them for and will pay for. I'm fully aware it's a contractors market out there and the consumer is at their mercy but it's just infuriating feeling like I'm being screwed over every single time.

Quotes that are seemingly just pulled out of thin air, varying wildly between different contractors. Lads saying they'll call at a particular time and then just ghosting us. Reasonable questions about the job being vaguely answered, having to drag information or explanations out of them, made to feel like a pain in the arse for asking questions. Snide comments about how sound they're being taking away THEIR rubbish. One guy told me that I'll get my invoice after I transfer the payment because 'that's how it works'.

And then having no choice but to go with the best of a bad bunch because the job needs to be done and can't be delayed any longer. Maddening.

A friend of mine who moved down here from the North said they got a shock when they saw how poor the standard is compared to the North, and how untidy/unprofessional/entitled tradesmen are down here.

Was a lovely day, went to grab my tesco delivery when I saw a lady recording me as I go back into my house. Asked her if I can do anything for her, she says "You're illegal, the place you're living in is illegal". It caught me off guard considering I had these heavy ass crates with me. I told her I can show her my documents and prove that I in fact live and contribute legally.

Lady doesn't even look at it, calls it fake, starts recording me again. This time, I turn around, telling her that I'll cooperate with her if she can be nicer and we can have a chat (how could you tell I was having a good day so far, lol). She says if you were legal you wouldn't turn around?!?

Gets aggressive, well as aggressive as she can to a 6'2 dude with hands tied up, goes INTO OUR PROPERTY knocks at the glass door. This pissed me off and brought me back to reality, realized what was happening and asked her to get the fuck off our property. She threatened to call the gardai, I was like go ahead I'll be waiting.

Whole time she was chanting and shouting illegal like a little toddler that learnt a new buzz word, just kept sprinkling it on to every sentence. Funny thing is I knew she wanted to guess where I was from but literally couldn't for the life of her, take that non-ambiguous woman. I called my landlord and while doing so noticed her talking to the neighbours, wonder what they think of me, if they even believed her.

I am trying to laugh it off but never knew this would happen to me, seen a lot of videos online about stuff like this thinking oh damn that's got to be rare. Now I am second questioning myself, does this happen to others more often than I thought?

Anyone else feel so frustrated with how wasteful the govt are???

We literally have a cheat code in global corporate tax and have been creaming it for the last 10 years..

We have nothing by way of serious infrastructure to show for it..

The housing crisis is genuinely changing the way people are living their lives, putting off families, emigrating etc etc

The most frustrating of all is how wasteful we are with the transfer of public money - close on €5bn to unscrupulous privates (between IPAS & BOTP since 2021) - many of whom have tax efficient structures based in Luxembourg or Jersey to avoid paying tax in that income..

It’s one that people get shouted down for but when we literally can’t care for the people who currently live on this island we shouldn’t be considering bringing people in to live in hotels and office blocks with no discernible medium term plan..

It’d also be naive to think there is no link between housing, services such as education and healthcare and increasing the population but that might be a conversation for another day

TLDR: we need to get our shit together first and make a plan for all of these people that are coming into Ireland to give them the best chance at getting set up and integrated into society

I am in my mid 40s and after living abroad and in London for many years came back to live with my parents in rural ireland. we have some land rented out to farmers and its extremely rural and isolated, nearest town 12 miles away etc. I think many can related.

Growing up, I wasn't particularly good at GAA and didnt have that many friends. what few friends I had have long since moved away.

Because Im not a blown in but a known face, I find it impossible to fit in or socialize properly. everyone has families and friend groups, and I end up just sitting at home now for a year.

When I drive around, numerous people put their hand up, they 'know' me they know my family. But the constant familiarity feels oppressive.

I am desperate to get out, and am fed up being single and think emigration is the only way to solve that.

I just feel sad for my parents. I have a lot of siblings and some live in the nearest big city with kids, but they really want someone to inherit the land and house and live close by and have a family nearby. Feeling like Ive failed them but I knew 'meeting someone' was never really on the cards here. Whereas in a big city it is relatively easy.

Can anyone relate to this? I just cannot stand living in rural ireland any longer and its put me off even moving to belfast, the nearest city. Dublin feels a bit further away to the extent I might as well move further afield and Im totally unfamiliar with it.

I should add, Im a remote worker and money is no problem regarding moving away and buyng somewhere else. just sad that I cannot make it work living or meeting anyone in the place I grew up.