Edo suggested in a thread that people needed to do a brutal SWOT exercise to explore Ireland's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunties and Threats.

This thread is to look at the biggest strengths we have.

Quote :

The whole country needs to undertake a brutally honest S.W.O.T. analysis asap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

Strengths thread
https://machinenation.forumakers.com/economy-business-and-finance-f8/s-ireland-s-biggest-strengths-swot-at-edo-s-suggestion-t1795.htm
Weaknesses thread
https://machinenation.forumakers.com/economy-business-and-finance-f8/w-biggest-weaknesses-in-ireland-swot-at-edo-s-suggestion-t1796.htm
Opportunities thread -
https://machinenation.forumakers.com/economy-business-and-finance-f8/o-ireland-s-biggest-opportunities-2008-2020-swot-edo-s-suggestion-t1153.htm
Threats thread
https://machinenation.forumakers.com/economy-business-and-finance-f8/t-biggest-threats-to-ireland-2008-2020-part-of-swot-at-edo-s-suggestion-t1794.htm

Respvblica posted

Strengths:
-English Language
-EU membership
-some democracy (referendum)

I know SWOT is probably a very reputed practice but the fact that we studied it for LCVP destroys all credibility for me.

Anyway, location, ie between US and UK/Europe

Ireland never went nuclear. That's a big strength.

Small and flexible
GAA
Water between us and the UK
Still the EU's youngest population
Good potential for wind and wave power
Good agriculture
Good literacy
Music

soubresauts wrote:

Ireland never went nuclear. That's a big strength.

How?

soubresauts wrote:

Ireland never went nuclear. That's a big strength.

The Country mightn't have , but plenty of the population are close - Im one step away from a hiroshima all of my own if I have to watch Mary Coughlan bluff her way thru one more interview

Seriously tho - it cuts both ways - yes being non-nuclear should give our farming industry a major point to push for premium prices in foreign markets - but that would require them to get their act and vision together - ie the whole piggie fandango and the fact that they are more in favour of a very difficult market of 350 million -all of which have more highly developed niche and top end food sectors than our own - rather than take their chances in a world market of 5 billion - at least 100 million of which would have the disposable income to buy a premium non nuclear organic foodstuff.

on the other hand - I cant see us (Ireland of the reality as opposed to the theory) ever producing more than 10-15% of our power needs from renewables in the immediate furture - development of any fossil fuels will be quickly stopped in its tracks by Hermes and his anarchic SWAT troopers - nuclear has to be an option - then again we'll probably have the usual Irish solution to an Irish problem and import the energy from Britain France and Spain who are ramping up their nuclear programmes big time - that way we'll get the benefits without soiling our precious morals and values - how very Irish.

Ok - Im outta here before Kate P tears me a new one for ganging up on the farmers again

Isnt the combustion associated with using carbon based fuels the breaking of weak nuclear forces(breaking the molecular bond). Intuitively getting energy from sheering the strong nuclear forces should be more efficient, albeit it has the radiation by-product.
Of the renewables Solar seems the most interesting to me but its Ireland we're talking abouth ere.

I'd be in favour of a nuclear system - one that effiently realses the strong nuclear energy. We should be involved in investigating this. If we had at least one nuclear power station, we would be in a position to have some expertiese in the area. As it is we are being left behind.
Or thats what it seems to me.

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

tonys wrote:

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

Well, this tonys, if you wanted to say anything positive, about what Ireland's strengths are, this thread is all ready for you. Instead, you're the only person who has chosen to post about weaknesses in the Strengths thread. Why is that?

tonys wrote:

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

One of our strengths in this country is undoubtedly your logic and reasoned mathematical analysis tonys.

And natural resources such as this (peak Sunday demand on December 14th '08 was 4152 MW)



for 2009 here it will be forests forests forests. Get used to seeing lots of trees from now on because I'm going on a massive rant for the entire year. We've some great natural growth potential which I do feel we need to be using to make up the forest gap of our current 10% upto the EU avg. of 30%. I'd love to see arguments against not revamping our forestry programmes and bodies entirely, if necessary lobbying the ECB to print us money for real growth. I think the effects on energy security, the ecology, tourism, health, employment and morale would be surprisingly positive from just leveraging this natural capacity inherent in our land and climate.

Trees: the new spuds.

tonys has made the point that this thread needs more attention, as opposed to unremitting self flogging re weaknesses ( which still need to be noted).

Please confine your remarks here to strengths - weakenesse, threats and opportunities have their own separate threads.

I'll be collating the full results of the four threads in a week or two - if enough posters put their minds to it seriously the outcome should be interesting.

Water (as a resource to sell to water stress and power supply)
Wind (possible power)
Agriculture (can support our own food to a point)
Tourism (Ireland is an giant lake district if you ask me)
Culture (compare to the Dutch, even the French who now have but their language and cuisine)
Celtic (other nations)

Lots of gorgeous food and cooking - much better than ten years ago.

riven wrote:

Water (as a resource to sell to water stress and power supply)
Wind (possible power)
Agriculture (can support our own food to a point)
Tourism (Ireland is an giant lake district if you ask me)
Culture (compare to the Dutch, even the French who now have but their language and cuisine)
Celtic (other nations)

Yes Water is falling out of the sky and we're thinking of piping it from the Shannon to Dublin.

We're blessed with a temperate climate and such natural resources as water and it would be no harm to set ourselves the aims of reducing losses through groundwork but especially through rain collection incentives.

We've also a very low population density so we are in a fabulous position (you'd think) to provide for ourselves with the productive land we have coupled with the excellent natural resources. I'd wonder where we'd stand if there was such thing as a National Self-Sufficiency Index ?


http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.europe.html

And in 2002 according to the CSO we had:
6,992,000 Cattle
7,210,000 Sheep
1,770,000 Pigs
12,709,000 Poultry
73,000 Horses and ponies
8,000 Goats

http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/other_releases/2003/agriculture.pdf

According to

this we have much less cattle - around 1.5 million.

There was alot of anecdotal evidence that people were lying about the number of cattle, sheep etc that they had in order to get better CAP payments... that could explain the outlandish numbers on some statistics.

johnfás wrote:

There was alot of anecdotal evidence that people were lying about the number of cattle, sheep etc that they had in order to get better CAP payments... that could explain the outlandish numbers on some statistics.

Lying about the stats is a weakness, so its off topic on this thread. What do you think Ireland's strengths are?

tonys wrote:

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

I hear the Finns are supposed to be pretty good. We could have a match.

905 wrote:

tonys wrote:

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

I hear the Finns are supposed to be pretty good. We could have a match.

Already said - wrong thread - its a weakness. How about a list of strengths, please?

One of our main strengths is demographic. We have one of the youngest populations in Europe. This is a resource we could harness (education) to dig ourselves out of the FF/PD hole. I bet we just piss it all away with emigration though, letting the rest of the world grow off our young, like we did during the 20th Century.

cactus flower wrote:

905 wrote:

tonys wrote:

Our ability to put ourselves down is without parallel in the developed world.
At this, we are simply the best.

Have I put this in the right thread?. In any event I did so because this thread has only 7 or 8 posts while the opposite thread has 25 plus. I do so love balance.

I hear the Finns are supposed to be pretty good. We could have a match.

Already said - wrong thread - its a weakness. How about a list of strengths, please?

Aw, you're no fun.

Strengths: our ability to be in the right camp at the right time. We're Europeans when we want to be and Anglo-Saxons (you know what I mean) when it suits, both Boston and Berlin. We manage to be in with all the developed countries when it suits, yet we can hobnob with the all the postcolonials too. A certainmlevel of ambiguity or liminality could do us a deal of good, if not to everyone's taste. Bertie the socialist was representative of Ireland generally I think.

My perceptions of our greatest strengths:

1. There is a lot of selfconfidence out there. Much of this has come from the last ten or fifteen years of prosperity, but it is the flip side of our national self image. By and large most of us see where we have come from and just how far we have come, and is a welcome change from the "self praise is no praise" attitude that some of my teachers had in the early 1970s. It is a very good place to start from.

2. Our education system.

3. Up to now, our good relations with the EU and other countries in it.

4. Our colonial past. This has given us a entry into peacekeeping work and is the basis of our Defence forces good work.

5. Our diplomatic ability.

6. The flipside of Gombeenism - we do have entrepreneurs. However we need to create something distinctive for ourselves in much the same way as Finland has done with Nokia. Perhaps we need to look again at our production of food and drink and allied with our "clean and green" image abroad, make this country a world beater again at different forms of food production, ranging from the everyday to the exclusive. Go into your local offlicence and look at the range of beers for example. We need to examine how the Belgians, for example, created a massive industry for themselves based on craft brewing. This is just one example, there could be hundreds of others in different areas if we turn our minds to it.

Making and selling Things that people want all over the world is the road out of the multinational backwater we seem to becoming.

Ronald Binge wrote:

Making and selling Things that people want all over the world is the road out of the multinational backwater we seem to becoming.

I'm not sure what you mean by "multi-national backwater".

The multinational sector was and still is a huge sector for us. We attracted a lot of European and American multinats here over the years.

We should be building on this, if possable.

And why not get Asian and Indian HQs to locate here. Ireland could be the "voice of the east".
We keep hearing about "moving up the value chain" yada, yada, yada.
Lets invest in teaching Chinese, Urdu, Indonesian etc. When these countries eventually come to set up in Europe (like the Americans and Japanese did), we would be in the frame.

Multinationals get what they want for a time and then pull out. That's the lesson of the last forty years. Remember Ford, Polaroid, Dunlop, Ispat, Lufthansa, Ferenka......