I find it hard to disagree with the key point of your main post regarding vision

Two points arising from your own comment if I may;

1. YCYC is not “without any action at the end” as you suggest.

In six month’s time the two best proposals will each be placed at the centre of a two year
action programme to put them into action with further money to be spent on doing so.

2. The option of just handing funds to existing ‘agencies’ assumes that YCYC is doing
more of the same work they are doing. That is not the case. It is specifically not looking
to fill in old templates and revisist / reuse old ideas and if it were, it would be criticised for
that too. Neither is this competition about identifying specific business proposals `
which result in the development of one product, or growing only one company’s work
force – which I believe is generally the remit of the CEBs

The entire premise of YCYC is that people have stopped thinking or even
contemplating new ideas over the past ten years because they didn’t have to . Now they
(or I sould say we) have to start thinking again and YCYC is a mechanic to
stiumulate them in the regard, get them talking and if it leads there – start pushing the
system for change, but on the basis of and with ideas for future exploitation that need that
change rather than as a reaction to events in the past

On Twitter over the weekend, it was highlighted by Conor O’Neill that there were significantly better ways that this €300,000 could have been spent – in ways that would directly help job creating businesses rather than airy fairy publicity campaigns.

The response from Padraig McKeon (member of the YCYC committee) to such comments was “why not suggest those as ideas in the YCYC competition”.

And there we have it. It’s the ideas that are more important than any kind action to certain people in our country at the moment. The appearance of action without any action at the end of it all – but more on that later.