We often debate the slow pace of progress and the poor return for investment from infrastructure spending in Ireland. Motorways seem to take forever to complete, not least because we worry so much about damaging our treasured national heritage, and new schools and hospitals always seem to be built too late or with inadequate facilities.

But reading, as I did today some of the notes on the construction of the Erie Canal in New York State on the pages of the History News Network, it struck me that the problems of 21st Century Ireland are not so new and not at all unique:

Perhaps we should feel lucky? But then you hear the news about the safety system in the Port Tunnel and you realise that though the world changes, people and the problems they encounter rarely do. Eoin