Stranded assets, when historic capital expenditure has to be written off, can arise through unforeseen developments in technology, surprising shifts in demand or plain bad luck. But they also arise through avoidable errors, the creation of physical or human assets with long lives for which high levels of utilisation were never plausible. These are designer white elephants. Optimism bias on the part of project promoters is a recurring generator of white elephants in many countries, Ireland included, especially when access to public funds is too easy.  Cost overruns are best seen as a distinct problem. An otherwise sensible project can…

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