OPINION:Builders and developers have finally managed to shape the country in their own image, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
THE DRAFT National Asset Management Agency (Nama) legislation runs to 136 pages, so it’s not too surprising that most people have missed the interesting section 201.
It reads as follows: 201.1: Henceforth, all male children shall be called Seán, Seánie, Paddy, Mick, Tom, Joe, Gerry, Liam or Bernard. All female children shall be christened Seona, Patricia, Michaela, Tomasina, Josephine, Geraldine, Wilma or Bernadine and shall be referred to de facto as Seán, Seánie, Paddy, Mick, Tom, Joe, Gerry, Liam or Bernard.
201.2: From the coming into force of this legislation, all citizens shall be required to receive a daily dosage of testosterone and cocaine to induce feelings of competitive aggression and megalomaniacal omnipotence.
201.3: All male citizens shall wear a pink shirt as a declaration that said citizen is so macho that he can wear pink and not be thought gay.
201.4: Modes of transport other than private jet or helicopter shall be prohibited by law. Usage of public transport shall be punishable by death.
201.5: All citizens shall be required to own at least one racehorse and attend at least five race meetings in every calendar year. During such attendance, citizens shall study the consistency of the nether parts of jockeys and attempt to develop necks of similar consistency.
201.6: All citizens shall be required to make regular donations to Fianna Fáil, just below the limit at which disclosure would be necessary. All citizens shall vote for Fianna Fáil, while retaining a sneaking regard for Charles J Haughey and a soft spot for Bertie Ahern. All citizens shall repeat at regular intervals that you can judge the health of the country by the number of cranes on the skyline.
201.7: All citizens shall extemporise pompous and reactionary views on dole scroungers, trade unions, pampered schoolchildren and other social parasites who, unlike themselves, are a “burden on the nation”.
Okay, so none of this is in the Bill, but it ought to be. For this is who we are now. Napoleon famously called the English a nation of shopkeepers. We are now to be a nation of property speculators. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. The principal activity of this State, for this generation and probably the next, is to be the management of the biggest property company on the planet. Everything else – health, education, security, job creation – will be a side issue. We now live in Developerland – of which Ireland is a wholly-owned offshore subsidiary.
The State is taking on not just the debts of the property developers, but their habits of mind. We’re going for a grand, heady gesture: the €90 billion that’s at stake here is the same as the entire amount the Spanish government, in a vastly bigger economy, is spending on its entire bank bailout. And we’re channelling the developers’ adrenaline-fuelled love of risky behaviour.
Remember all that stuff about the wisdom of the market, which decided what things (and people) were worth and it was wrong, wrong, wrong to interfere? Scratch that. The market may think that virtually every property in what is to be the people’s portfolio is worth a fraction of what madmen paid for it at the height of the boom.
But we’re not going to buy the stuff at market rates, we’re going to buy it at some notional future value, determined by a raft of assumptions. These include the notion that the depression is a short period of readjustment and things will get better. We’re gambling on the future or, in other words, speculating.
We’re supposed to be reassured by the fact that these values will be set by independent auditors – like, presumably, the independent auditors whose assessment of the worth of Liam Carroll’s properties was said by Mr Justice Peter Kelly in the High Court to show “a degree of optimism [that] borders, if not actually trespasses, on the fanciful”.
This being the case, we have to start thinking like speculators. This takes a bit of getting used to. Take, for example, the office tower in the Rockbrook development in Sandyford, Dublin, that we heard about last week when ACCBank took our brother developer John Fleming to court. It is worth €10 million, but will cost €20 million to build.
Inspired, entrepreneurial thinking-outside-the-box go-getters like us see an opportunity.
Someday, when the tower is built and everything gets back to the crazed normality of the boom years, it will be worth €30 million. Now if you’re not seeing this then you’re not with the programme, you’re obviously not taking your cocaine.
Like Frankenstein, we’re doomed to spend the rest of our days chasing after the monster we created. We gave the developers and speculators the run of the country and they’ve managed to shape it in their own image.
We’re all on the same side now, whether we like it or not. All sucked in to a giant crapshoot in which we take our children’s future and roll the dice. Everything that makes for a civilised country is riding on the outcome of what must be proportionally the largest financial gamble any state has ever punted on.
But never mind, the helicopters will be nice.