Dublin 4 bandied across the media to imply elitism.

Truth is lots of people are in debt, more are fighting to keep their substandard flats in Pre 63 Victorian/Georgian houses, “Elites” on the Wealth list keep their houses vacant or for occasional use. Why is the human race so stupid? We knew in 2008 that breakers were ahead but instead we have continued to let the debt compound to non payable reality and lost out on community building using the positives that already have been achieved.

We are not Greece, We are not Spain, We are unique, We are the Island of Ireland and we could do with taking some spunk and courage from Iceland, a country with a geo-political enticement to an over bureaucratic EU, (with its in built gravy train) but Iceland is well able to continue to hold out the carrot until they decide whether the EC route is their best option.

Cinderella refers to the Sick state of Baggot Street Community Hospital and the FAS Head Office – both are capable of creating centres of excellence that could employ people, be creative, and to have a vision and drive economic growth. The infrastructure exists. Philanthropists exist.

A positive: At least Bank of Ireland have moved a lot of their staff to a NAMA building on Burlington Road ie Plaza 1, news has it that Sky have taken the other building.  People power can form an urban identity. Baggotrath goes back to 17th century.

Reduce the rates so that Searsons can be re-opened by Diageo and so businesses are given the chance to survive. The people in this village are trying hard but need support from Government.

I note Bewley’s now a haven for all again especially tourists is packed to the gills daily and they are going to look for a 50% cut in rent from some UK insurance company that owns the building. Vote with Feet time.

1980’s recession did not have the infrastructure that now exists – it was a dismal time. Some men and maybe women had a dream. It was the IFSC, the dream worked until some got greedy but we need to sort the good from the bad and move on now.

by Michelle Clarke

Do we know what lies ahead?

Do we care?

We learn today that Mr Timmins, Chief Executive, Clery’s Department Store has been asked to stand down as Chief Executive. It is possible now to say (according to today’s Irish Times) that he stood over the poor decisions for opening retail units in Blanchardstown, Naas and other unsuccessful options. The staff of these stores had hours cut and in turn without any notice were notified their jobs were gone. Cold harsh treatment and quite inhumane.

Gordon Brothers Europe, a Mr. Morton, are the new boys in town. A US investment vehicle who buys £26m debt owed by Clery’s for £11m. Their job is make profit for investors in their fund. They are risk-takers with experience, some might he even go so far as to refer to those who are the backbone of vulture funds.

Just imagine if they decided to maintain the building until markets improved by dismissing all staff and just leaving it vacant?  What would this mean for the already jaded O’Connell Street? This is just a what if? No doubt soon we will hear what plans Mr. Morton has for that once splendid shop. I wonder have the Government given them favourable rates or for that matter what deal was negotiated with Gordon Brothers?

50% sale on at present and the aim is to de-stock and re-plan? It would be nice if their plans could be put into effect before Christmas.

There was a time when people travelled far and wide to see the windows of Clery’s for their Christmas Display for children. Austerity is the order of the day in Ireland for 5 years now. Would Gordon Brothers and Mr Morton, while renovating the store, create a theme for children in those store windows like times of yore? Just a thought but we need HOPE.

Also would the Gordon Brothers and Mr. Morton re-employ as many as possible of the staff who have worked as loyal workers of Clerys but who are now unemployed and willing to work?

By Michelle Clarke (Forster)

by Michelle Clarke (Blake)

Total endorsement of what Gale writes. The people need to be empowered not over burdened by the debt Ireland is chained to by the Troika, (ECB, IMF, EU) – there is another way to compounding debt going foward. Greece has leveraged a deal. Why not Ireland? We are a young country; we did create a boom for over a decade and why not again? Inequity cannot be sanctioned by the Masters of Troika.

Ireland is not totally errant; we can put forward some legitimate cutbacks and lend to the “containment” of government departments which over spend. Take for example health. There is a kind of paradox with health. Marketing determines the culture around alcohol which in turn comes from the globally run companies like Diageo. They make their attempts to educate people about alcohol with their ‘Drink Aware’ campaigns but this is but a gesture, their objectives are profit through sales. However the government is quite hypocritical also. The more they increase the tax element of drink or for that matter cigarettes and the more they curtail smuggling through Customs and Excise and otherwise, the more that is fed into the coffers and onto the positive side of the balance sheet. Therein is the paradox. What or more importantly who suffers? Well for a start the health of the people and the performance and profitability of the health service.

What can the people do about this? Become aware of the costs involved. Have a sense of moral obligation to the society we live in not to be wasteful of the services that our provided by the taxation of all citizens of the State. Take the following example from Don Lavery’s article in the Sunday Independent:

‘Ireland has become a nation of binge drinkers…the average drinker taking equivalent of a bottle of vodka a week’.

Worth considering this: ‘In pure financial terms, Dr Bedford added, ‘alcohol-related harm in Ireland costs the economy £3.7 bn’. ie BILLION

Shame on us. A man is found in a doorway in Bray, hypothermia determines that a man in his thirties is no longer for the this society, he is dead.

Last week, we had an altercation in Nassau Street, again a young man but deaf, who lives in a hostel results in one innocent man dead with appalling injuries, and the deaf man being charged with manslaughter. Add to this the trauma of the bus driver and all the people who witnessed the accident on a busy street at rush hour. This recession is biting hard and the social cost is leaving people highly vulnerable while the entitled/established classes embrace the denial necessary to detach themselves from the harsh reality that condemns Ireland to years of excessive budgets ie £12 bn pa compound. At least in the US, people are honest, they know they need Revenue to avoid their Fiscal Cliff and they are honing on higher taxes for the wealthy.

T (response to writer on Citizen Journalism site) Your photos tell us a story of neglect by government, by City and County Councils, by Banks who are failing to manage their property portfolios (particularly those due to the inability of people to repay their debts), to housing associations, to private landlords and all property owners who are proving totally ineffective in putting the supply demand theory of economics into practice. Meanwhile, there are people on the housing list, properties left vacant, over 1700 ghost estates, properties left vacant in the hope of property appreciation in the medium to long term. Action is what is needed.

Instead we have the Government/Revenue throwing in their lot of further hardship. Those people who hold a mortgage and who are 6 months in arrears have further debt thrown at them. This time the tax relief that is collected at source which amounts to £4,000 where a couple have signed the mortgage, is to be added to their debt. This is Christmas tidings for 65,700 residential mortgage owners. If they manage to find 3 months consecutive payments from Santa over the Christmas period, their relief will be restored. The truth is if they haven’t managed to sort out their mortgage by now, it is improbable that they will collect the necessary 3 months to alleviate them going forward. Maybe this is why the policy makers say to the courts foreclose now and push people towards the housing list, we believe they are going there anyway. What a way to start 2013 for 65,700 people? I sure hope there is a plan.

Time and time again, it has been suggested that a special exception should be made for these people particularly those in negative equity because they were facilitated to buy properties by the banks up to the peak in 2007/8. What happens? The government reacts with this £4,000 excess charge + the property tax (yes that property tax that people must pay once they own a home irrespective of how they repay for their mortgages or what financial position they are in or for that matter if they have disabilities and are unable to work). Personally I believe that the Government gained significant Stamp Duty amounts from these people and it is only ethical and moral that it be repaid (even if only on the negative equity proportion) to reduce the capital amount of their loan. It may be just enough to move them out of arrears.

Meanwhile we are building an empty/potential empty property mountain – that same idea that used to happen with the EU and butter mountains! We need to wake up and start getting people grounded. We need now for someone to do the maths equation. Social housing which should have been built during the Celtic Tiger needs to be aggregated and then apartment blocks like those in the pictures need to be de-Namatised pronto in 2013 and people who live in the like of Fatima Mansions/O’Devaney Gardens and in other premises which are below standards need to be re-housed and the maths equation made to work.

Who will pay the property tax because I cannot see tax exiles doing so even if it is they who build 44,000 sq ft mansions with a swimming pool, gym and cinema. This man is said to have spent £100m on this house. The key is what will this house be valued at the due day of May 2013. Then of course there was the sale in Ailesbury Road for £10m with the new owner named as Mrs McManus. I wonder will she have to pay the £23,300 property tax. It is correct to assume that she may be a tax exile soon.

Negative equity is like an illness and take heed, if you neglect to treat it, it can easily become the disease that causes you to be a non contributor to life going forward. We know this happened to many people in recession of the 1980’s in the UK. Act now and stop the chaos.

Michael O’Leary please check into Government Ireland. We need some more of initiative urgently.

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/ireland

by Michelle Clarke (Forster)

Email No 22

 by Michelle Clarke  (Chestnut) – Urban abandonment 

Vacant
Boarded up
To let

Fast our city, Dublin,  is in the process of architectural decay. Builders and developers, the 5th Christmas into Austerity are accustomed to media coverage and are either buckling under debt living in their houses compliments of the Banks or Nama or else they are like McNamara, Ivan Yates and many others who have taken the quick route out of bankruptcy by moving over to the UK where the system facilitates them to be declared bankrupt in one year, leaving them ready to start again. Is this good or bad? Really I don’t know but bleeding people like a stone that has nothing to give and is surely destructive to the soul of the people, their families and to the country. This brings to mind the negative equity period that befell the UK in the 1980’s/90’s, the advertisement for a large house then read as follows: Bought for in excess of Stg£1m but will sell for £500,000 now (the period of time 6 months when rates moved from 7% to 14%+). I often wonder what was the final outcome for so many people including many Irish from the negative equity scenario in the 1980’s/90’s. Many people just put their keys through the letter box and virtually disappeared. Feedback would be interesting if anyone was interested enough to do the research back then.

All we know from the economists these days is that markets have no memories so this recession in Ireland most likely is the replay of the Canary Wharf London boom/bust of the 1990’s, the desire for apartment living in the City and the buy-to-let source of investment,a means of getting return on capital invested. The irony now is that the UK has housing shortage. What can we learn now that we have plenty of time on our hands to come up with solutions. Let us not forget that during the Celtic Tiger affordable housing plans replaced social housing and public private partnerships were put on the long finger and never came into play to meet the needs of people in need of social housing. The reality is we need departments to communicate and take surplus unoccupied property and make it available at newly achieved market prices.

Christmas this year and there is sadness in the air for so many. These overpaid bankers with the quick dash of pen or a thought, can wipe away the plans of a person, their family, their business, their workers, to oblivion and we need to ask why? We need to ask, is there a better way? Would these people be better advised to say goodbye to the idea of owning their own house?  After all we are only following the English man’s ambition ‘My home is my Castle’. Is it? The French and Germans think differently. They lean on the side of renting and saving. Could there be a culture change in Ireland? This property tax will not apply to people who rent a house, it will be up to the landlord to pay. Will we shift the divide? Landlords banding together like REITS in the US versus tenants who are protected by the law to certain standards of maintenance for where they live. Is there a better way? A change of attitude perhaps.

Tax incentives to buy property seem to be going out of fashion.  If Bank of Ireland are kicking into play the dogma, if you haven’t met your arrears for three months, well then they will deduct £4,000 that would have equated to the tax relief and are effectively evicting the people from their homes. Why Christmas? If this is the case why as stated before that it is both moral and ethical that the Government ought to repay the stamp duty charged to those people who bought at the high end of negative equity ie around 2007. The repayment to the capital amount would be sufficient to restructure the loan, the repayments, add to this extending the life of the loan to over 30 years based naturally on the potential of people to repay when the economic climate improves. Debt forgiveness is a bitter pill for people to accept but I would think nobody would object to the Government paying back stamp duty as a gesture. For other people who are beyond such a remedy, then take them out of the agony, that dream of home ownership, and create the rental market that gives them an opportunity to find their level.

Today the headline goes that as many as 20,000 are in arrears for 2 years, the size of the City of Kilkenny.

Europe through bad planning and the Euro creation created its own Economic War. Economic is about money in a world that is harbouring countries like Syria, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan to say just a few. Their war is real war death and suffering. Ireland needs to ask the Europeans to put the foot of the accelerator for progress. They have NATO doing their ‘dirty’ work of war. January 2013 Ireland heads into the EU presidency, rumblings say there is a decorum when President of the EU that you don’t give priority to your ‘dirty washing’. All I can say is this is an opportunity and we should not let it pause.