The Kettle's Boyled: Expecting twins? Then don’t buy a motorbike

Normal people try to plan ahead and keep on top of everyday things. If a lightbulb fails, we replace it. We don’t watch every lightbulb in the house fail one by one over months and years and then complain that none of the lights work. Ideally, we even keep a few bulbs in the drawer for when the inevitable happens.

It’s all about forward planning. If we are expecting twins, we might consider trading in the two-seater sportscar for something with a couple of rear seats. The last thing we would do is go the other direction and turn up at the hospital with a motorbike.

We look at our situation from time to time and adjust our plans to suit our needs and our best interests. We do this automatically, using our common sense We don’t need to bring in consultants to tell us the motorbike idea isn’t the best answer for when the twins arrive, and so we don’t have to hand them the price of a car in return for their advice. We assess what we have and measure it against our future needs and make the required changes ahead of time.

Governments do the same, in theory anyway, with the taking of a national census. The last one told us Ireland’s population had increased by 8% (387,274 people) to 5,149,139 in the six years between the previous census of April 2016 and the most recent in April 2022. It was the first time in the 171 years since 1851 that the population of our 26 counties exceeded five million. That information was the equivalent of several flickering lightbulbs, reminding us we needed to buy a few new ones and maybe forget about the motorbike. But we did the opposite.

We failed to provide enough housing, but we also failed to read other signs. An increasing population with more money to spend means increased drug use and crime in general, but we failed to provide prison spaces to match this likely demand and so we have a revolving door of a bail system where people reoffend without any form of censure. There is simply nowhere to put them.

We need to build a new prison to track population numbers, but that will take far too long. In the meantime, why not ask the private sector to quickly build and operate a prison for people on remand? Such facilities work elsewhere, including our nearest neighbour where many of the mainstream prisons are owned and run by private companies.

A private remand prison would free up space in mainstream prisons and would stop the rash of crimes committed every day by recidivists out on bail. The courts are full of these cases, so removing them from the picture would allow those courts to function better.

Or do we wait for all the lights to go out before we start looking for bulbs?