It’s now officially summer in Ireland, a time for sunscreen, bad traffic, festival FOMO, and staring at a kitchen extension that began in October and is somehow still not finished.
Yes folks, we are in what I would describe as the late middle ages of the project. At this stage, the thing we are looking forward to most is just not having to speak to tradespeople anymore.
The window company, who I won’t name directly, but have a fancy, upmarket-sounding name that belies their actual behaviour, took several months to deliver a single window and door.
Then another two months to deliver…a ledge.
Not the rugger-bugger type of ledge. Not a load-bearing, baroque, CNC-sculpted architectural flourish. No; just a regular, functional, aluminium ledge. And now they’ve informed us on the phone, with the energy of a 1950s Hollywood starlet, that they won’t be sealing around the window frames with silicone.
‘That’s your builder’s job’, they said, breezily. I’ve written about 10 expletive-laden emails, all of which I’ve had to delete before sending, in the last month, just to get the rage out of my system. I know we’re massively privileged to have a house and to be adding to it, but for Christ’s sake….
Meanwhile, our electricians have adopted the work schedule of mercurial wizards.
Every fortnight or so, they apparate onto the site without warning, conjure a few fresh holes in walls that had none, install a mysterious switch or pendant light, and then vanish again like Houdini mid–smoke bomb.
I half expect to find a wand wedged behind the fuse board, plus the amount of money they’ll be magicking out of my account at the end of the process is enough to make a man choke on his cornflakes.
The broader housing crisis, of course, grinds on.
If our humble one-room box-on-the-back is anything to go by, there’s no hope of reaching 50,000 new homes a year unless we start building them on Roblox.
At this stage, I’d welcome a robot plastering crew and a prefab factory built inside a hangar.
Let ChatGPT handle the planning objections.
Let the Boston Dynamics dog chase away the quantity surveyors.
I’ve had it with the human versions.
Droning onwards
Speaking of things that hover and hum and refuse to leave you in peace, north Dublin residents are now living beneath the regular whir of delivery drones. ‘Like living near a helicopter’, said one poor soul in The Irish Times. The takeaway drone revolution is here, and apparently it sounds like a swarm of electric bees with a spice bag strapped to their legs.
This is the future. Not hoverboards or universal childcare, but garlic cheese chips delivered from 300 feet in the air. Not jetpacks or meaningful climate action, but a quadcopter dropping battered sausages into a garden in Ballymun. Who knew our version of Blade Runner future would be so…Supermac’s?
It’s not just takeaway, by the way. Drones are now a standard feature at weddings, protests, GAA matches, junior park runs. Every big occasion comes with a quiet buzzing presence overhead, like a mechanical angel watching over us all. I remember when the only thing flying over a communion was a lonely balloon. Now there’s a fella in a fleece with a remote control the size of a briefcase, panning dramatically over the parish marquee.
With regards to this, we never really agreed on rules, did we? I remember a drone flying over our garden one warm afternoon during the first Covid lockdown and, though I was glad of the company for a minute, I quickly started to wonder what it was filming and who was filming it. Home Alone-style goons scoping my house out for a robbery? Within moments I felt like my private space had been violated and I called the guards immediately. Turns out it was someone doing a survey for the council, or something like that, but still. Not cool. Thankfully, I haven’t seen one since.
I think people will make allowances for emergency medical supplies or essential deliveries to those in need. But drones dropping kebabs on command? That’s a tougher sell.
Demand for Robobuilders
But the more dangerous machine might be the one that’s not flying, it’s the one sitting quietly at your desk, waiting to eat your job.
This week, the CEO of Anthropic, makers of the Claude AI models, warned that 50% of white-collar, entry-level jobs could disappear within five years. That’s not from a sci-fi novelist, it’s from the man building the machines.
Dario Amodei told Axios that AI could trigger unemployment rates of 10 to 20%, and even suggested governments should start taxing companies like his a 3% ‘token tax’ per model use, to help fund retraining schemes. The fear is real, especially for young workers.
In Ireland, graduate unemployment has risen to 6.5% for the class of 2023, up from 4.4% the previous year. The situation is even worse for postgraduates, with unemployment rising to 9.0% from 5.8%.
It’s definitely a concern for anyone trying to pick a college course or chart a career path that won’t be immediately swallowed by automation. From what I’ve seen lately, there’s a huge opportunity for smart young people with practical skills to revolutionise the building trade. We desperately need them.
