Madam, – Here’s why the public is absolutely livid at the proposed creation of the National Asset Management Agency.
In every neighbourhood in Ireland, there live among us individuals who decided to speculate on land over the last 10 years. These people successfully built housing estates and took part in land deals. They made money, and they now drive high-powered cars, many have multiple cars, and some have helicopters. The wealth was not shared, because that would have been socialism. The individual who took the risk rightly got the reward, because that was the free market.
In the last years of the boom, these individuals over-stretched themselves to an extraordinary extent, and they are now essentially insolvent.
However, they have refused to sell their surplus housing units at their true market value and allow normality to return to home ownership in this country. The banks, which lent massive amounts of money to them for this speculation, have now taken the decision that surplus units should not be sold at their normal price, and instead that the loans should be transferred to Nama. This, put simply, is a better deal for the banks than they would get on the open market. They know it, and the Government knows it.
But the working people of this country, whose other neighbours and friends are out of work, or on three-day weeks, and who (if they are lucky enough to still have a job) themselves may be straddled with public sector pension levies, income levies, and tax hikes, are finding the going very tough.Their houses are in danger of foreclosure, but no one will bail them out.
Sub-contractors, who worked hard usually on fixed-price jobs with no uplift if the units increased in value, are not being paid because the developer cannot sell the units. The sub-contractors did not stand to share in the gain, but they are being asked to share in the pain.
The average worker, either public sector or private, never stood to receive the benefit of all this rampant speculation. But we are now being asked to take the pain, because if we don’t, things will apparently get worse.
However, our developer/ speculator neighbours, despite their insolvency, still maintain their 5,000sq ft mansions and multiple cars. And it appears the proposed Nama legislation actually protects their homes from seizure, regardless of their size or opulence.
Is it any wonder people are as mad as hell? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Has the race to the bottom in certain strands of Irish media in search of populist attention given rise to a new demographic, “The Bitterati”? The current debate on Nama is a case in point. It appears that the relevant parties hook on to a rabble-rousing issue and pursue it for applause rather that focusing on analysis of the complexities of the debate.
While we all variously had a part to play in our current predicament, we all too have a part to play in finding a way out of it. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Recent comments about Nama, by Alan Dukes (Home News, September 7th) and others, have revolved around whether or not “the market will recover”. The market is recovering quite well without Nama, thank goodness. Every day that the madness dissipates, every day that house prices approach three to four times wages, every day prices edge closer to being affordable by our kids, every day people find they can live within reasonable distance of their work – that is another good day of recovery. Any interference by Nama to delay the recovery should be resisted. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Before the Irish nation makes its decision on Nama, perhaps people should take a look at themselves. While the proposed bail-out of the property developers is not their greatest achievement, there is a need to return the country to some sort of post-apocalyptic normality.
It is all very well blaming the developers for the ills of the country, but the nation as a whole should bear some of the blame.
I had to laugh a few years ago when I questioned the price of housing in Dublin compared to London, to be told that Ireland was the place to be and that the prices were justified: I realised that as a nation we had got too full of ourselves.
As an Irishman I was embarrassed by my fellow countrymen and women who thought they could also go to other countries and buy their way to perceived fortunes. Many a development in the UK was plagued by the myriad of Irish people who would not buy just one, but multiples of units in their fervour to become the landlords of their previous foe, thereby curing the ills of their ancestors.
Where are the hordes who queued at every new development outbidding each other for what came on the market, who, instead of looking to house themselves were hell-bent on buying multiple units with the great Irish millionaire ethos? It was a nation’s greed that created a lot of the problems now evident and until this greed is paid for there will be no salvation from the fires of Nama costs, or whatever is decided to cure the country’s ills. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – With the nation in uproar over Nama, I can imagine that if the Celtic Tiger had continued and the banks and developers were still making multi-billion euro profits that now the discussions would be about NPSA – the national profit sharing agency. I think not. Handouts only seem to go one way. – Yours, etc,