According to the latest figures there are 440,000 people unemployed in Ireland.  At 2,000 working hours a year, that's roughly 200 man-years of labour lost per hour.  Never to return.

But what does 200 man years of development get you?  Well, let's look at what 8,000 man years of development gets you - that's the amount of labour Ireland loses every week.  In a 2002 paper it was determined that the Red Hat 7.1 distribution took 8,000 man years to develop.  Currently Red Hat has a market cap of $6 billion.

Every week Ireland is losing the amount of labour it took to build an entire Linux distribution from scratch - from 0 lines of code to a fully functioning computer operating system, web browser, office applications, graphics programs, movie player, image viewer and development tools for over a dozen computer languages.  The labour required to build the core product of a $6 billion company is being lost every week in Ireland.

Doesn't seem like a wise use of resources, does it?

There is now the "D case" in Ireland regarding abortion. Essentially a 17 year old woman is 4 months pregnant and her foetus will not properly develop a brain. If the child is born alive (unlikely) the child will die within a few days at most. More likely is that she'll give birth to a corpse. Since she is not suicidal and is under the care of the HSE (the Health Services Executive), they are attempting to ban her travel to the UK.

There are actually two problems canals can solve in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The first problem that can be solved is Irish nationalism and the second problem that can be solved is marching season. As an added bonus that last solution can be used to increase tourism and help people with their gardens.