It may well be true that our Government needed to guarantee the banks to the tune of 400
Billion. It is without doubt that certain Irish banks were in difficulty, the banks which chose to
use historically low interest rates to fund a massive house building boom.
As a means to give themselves extra dosh they financed the buying of the land, the building of
houses, the marketing,and all the other sub-contractors involved in the build. And then, having
taken money at all levels to bring the developments to market,they decided they needed another
bite. At the jugular of another huge opportunity.
So they and their media friends-whose loyalty lay more with the Advertising Department than
with their audiences, who acted as PR men for the whole charade, the well-rewarded presstitutes
who promoted the new developments, growing fat on the plump property pages profits.
British televison shows taught us we could all get rich developing property if not terminally
thick.
The ads from the finance houses rolled in,the plugs for the rapacious lifestyle, for measuring
people by their house and not for themselves. And having helped create panic that not getting on
the property ladder all around they sucked in parental money for deposits. And harnessed our
next generation to 40 year mortgages.
This meant absurdly-priced homes being thrown up with no regard or responsibility to quality
or to minimising their environmental impacts. Minister Roche was the man responsible for
getting his developer friends derogations from European insulation levels whilst the largest
number of houses ever built were being hurriedly and profitably built. It would have added 3%
to the build cost of those houses to have made them energy-efficient during construction. But no,even as their profits grew as they raised house prices on a daily basis.
No. Instead the greedy devolopers and builders cut corners and showed their utter contempt for
their client, because it was a sellers market.
Their contempt for the environment is truly a disgrace, and says more about them than I can
say. Do these gombeen men plan on having no grandchildren, and care not a jot for the sort of
world for the world their great-efficiency grandkids might inherit?
(Roche really should be embarrassed, and hounded out of public life. His environmental crimes
will cost money as long as the houses last).
So we may have a lot of people with the sub-standard, energy-inefficient, but tax-free second
home, especially in the BMW region. Many of these homes will have low energy efficiency
certificates,making them harder to sell,and reduce their value. With ever-rising energy costs,
why buy a home which costs more to run?
This boom has led to a lot of empty homes, and the mortgages on them still have to be paid.. No
easy and profitable exit strategy in sight. No tenants to rent the buy-to-let pad. Especially now
the Eastern European builders left.And the mortgage is probably going to up.
Still historically property has always gone up in value.
Which is true to a point. In the old days, the bad old days of the early 1980s when I bought my
house in London at an interest rate of 16.75% and on a damn good salary, I couldn't get a
mortgage even twice my salary. More usually the salary you got might get you twice your salary,
as well as half your wife's. ( Yes, wife, as living with someone wasn't accepted by the banks.They
needed proof of marriage. Honest.)
What happens to the property and motgage if a job is lost? A major illness? It comes a nasty
shock when people discover that their critical illness cover is worth bugger-all, with more get-out
clauses than a Hollywood pre-nuptial agreement.
The very bankers and financiers who are responsible for this mess, the economists who were
assuring us only a few short months ago that there was no need to worry, that all was rosy, this
thieving cartel walk away with their hands in our pockets, their debts covered and their fat
salaries secured.
Now they urge us to overlook how we got here, how we got into this mess,promising that we can
examine this later. (Yeah, right.) How convenient!
Some even now have the gall to blame us, the people they seduced into becoming so massively
These are people for whom "ethics" is an English county
Lenin observed that Capitalism was ready to pay any price to ensure its survival, so long as the
workers get to pay that price. I wouldn't often agree with Vladimir Ilych, but have to admit he
was right.
Why don't we copy the model used by the Scandinavian countries when they went through a
similar disaster in the early 1990s? In return for getting their assets and debt protected, the
banks transferred equity to the State. At least let us, the plebs, profit when the banks overcome
their difficulties, having returned to more sound and old-fashioned banking principles.
And let us not ever forget just who got us here.
Let us also make sure they are not allowed forget, either. Or profit on the back of our sweat.
