Ireland day 0366. Thursday 29 September 2022- Workshop

Today’s summary	Attended a workshop organised by Geoscience Ireland at the Irish Management Institute in Sandymount, and gave a talk on Carbon Capture and Storage. Dinner at a Malahide curry restaurant in the evening to celebrate the first anniversary of our move to Ireland.
Today’s weather	Dry and bright but cool. Moderate northerly wind. About 15C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (No GPX today)

Commentary

I have to admit I never thought a day like today would happen to me. The long and short of it is that I went to an actual business meeting – something I haven’t done for quite a long time since leaving my last job in the UK Government.

Quite how this strange state of affairs came about is a long and complicated story, but basically it all stems from the paper I wrote a few months ago about Geological Survey Ireland. Since then, I have been asked to join a Panel of Experts convened by Geoscience Ireland (GI), which is a part-Government funded body which provides technical and policy advice on geotechnical matters to interested businesses. Since one of my last jobs was in carbon capture and storage (CCS) policy, I have become the de facto CCS “expert” (and I use the term loosely) on the panel.

By the way, in case you aren’t familiar with CCS, it’s a pollution abatement technology for extracting and disposing of carbon dioxide from the flue gases of major industrial processes and power stations. It’s particularly useful for enabling coal and gas fired power stations to remain in a zero carbon energy system. The main problem with it is that it’s expensive and there aren’t a whole lot of successful projects that you can point to which would give potential investors confidence.

So in line with my new found expertise, today I was invited to join a workshop organised by GI and after I had accepted the invitation, I got that dreaded email asking me to “say a few words” about CCS. “Saying a few words” is one of the scariest things you can be asked to do as a presenter, as you know that what is really expected is not actually “a few words” but a well thought through discussion piece covering all eventualities. So I must admit I had spent a few hours brushing up on my CCS knowledge (and I have to say was a bit disappointing to note that there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of progress since I last worked on the subject) and then condensing it all into three slides.

It was strange this morning, pulling on a jacket and smart trousers – rather than the T-shirt and shorts that are my normal attire – then heading to Malahide station to catch the 7:30 am commuter train to Dublin. Then once at the workshop venue – the Irish Management Institute (IMI) in Sandymount, south Dublin – going straight into business discussion mode with a group of like-minded delegates in the workshop venue.

My talk seemed to go well but what surprised me most was how remarkably familiar it all seemed. Even though it is a few years since I was last in a “proper” business working environment, it felt as if I had just left the office only yesterday. Everything seemed comfortable and familiar, all the issues were the same, and the modes of discussion hadn’t changed a bit. Even the struggles with the videoconferencing facilities for remote delegates were just the same as they ever were.

I’m not planning to make a habit of it but I must admit the session seemed to go well and I enjoyed it more than I expected. I was pleased that I didn’t seem to have lost all my critical faculties since stopping formal paid work. But I have to say that I think the jolt that moving to Ireland has given me has really cleared my head. I certainly think it’s helped to dispel some of that comfortable mind-fog that I was worried was beginning to descend on me when we were living in the UK.

Relieved to have got through the day without mishap – and even actually quite enjoying it – I enjoyed a relatively relaxed journey back to Malahide to get ready for Part Two of this momentous and rather out of the ordinary day.

So – what of this so called Part 2? Well, ardent readers will also have noted that today is the anniversary of our arrival in Ireland. I can hardly believe we have been here a year already! So much water has passed under the bridge since then – and, I suspect, there’s plenty more still to come. Anyway, for now, I’m going to call it a day as we are going out for a curry to celebrate. Tonight we’re trying the Kajjal restaurant in Malahide. We haven’t been there before but it does come highly recommended. It feels particularly well deserved today, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Half past eight on a Thursday morning in one of the business districts of Dublin. Heads down, coffees clutched, hundreds of grey office dwellers head to work down Overend Avenue	The path up from the Luas at Balally to the Irish Management Institute (IMI) at Sandyford passes by Ballawley Park – I’ve never been in and it looks like it might be worth exploring at some point

In the IMI grounds. It’s an impressive award winning campus and the buildings were opened in 1974. The land on which it’s situated in Sandymount was at one time also being considered by the Soviet Union as the site for their embassy to Ireland. The IMI’s mission is to improve the practice of management in ireland and it offers a number of degree-level courses and shorter executive education programmes. It was founded in 1952 and in 2016 was bought by University College Cork. It’s in the top 50 of the world’s estimated 16,000 business schools	Insite the IMI. It’s a very pleasant place to work – light and airy and generally well laid out.

And it has a mycological abundance popping up in the lawns surrounding it	The nearest Luas to the IMI is at Balally – here’s the tram from Brides Glen about to whizz me back along the green line to central Dublin

The cubic structure was apparently modelled on a museum in California. It works well and the interior space is surprisingly user-friendly