Big Brother, also known as the IMF, is keeping an eye on us, just as other countries are sailing out of recession, writes ORNA MULCAHY
WHO NEEDS reality TV with so much going on in Direland, as the Financial Times not so kindly christened us this week in a full-page analysis that would put the frighteners on international bond buyers?
There’s Michael Fingleton not giving his big fat bonus back, Denis O’Brien throwing ultimatums around at Independent News Media, economists and politicians frothing at the mouth over Nama, the Taoiseach plummeting in the popularity polls, and all the while the sense that Big Brother, in the form of the International Monetary Fund, is keeping an eye on us, just as other countries are sailing out of recession.
Then there are the histrionics in Ballsbridge, where property developer Seán Dunne’s wife Gayle has cheekily opened a supermarket on the Jurys hotel site to cater for her recession-hit neighbours.
It’s a perfectly good supermarket in a great location, and it should fly. Everyone likes a bargain, and there were cheap loo rolls by the pallet-load on offer earlier this week when your reporter called in for a look. The car park – €1 per half hour – was quiet, save for a young man trying to sell a vintage Jag which lent an Arthur Daly feel to the enterprise.
Socialite Gayle was nowhere to be seen on the tills, but a manager who looked like a Russian model was guiding customers around. An impeccably-dressed elderly man was being escorted through the brightly lit space, but admitted that he was just there to wish Gayle good luck with the venture after reading about it in the Sunday papers.
Gayle’s right: there isn’t an Aldi or Lidl within tottering distance from the big houses of Dublin 4, so good luck to her. D4 Stores, as it’s called, opens ’til 11pm, stocks lots of Irish brands, which is more than can be said for the local Tesco, and prices seem reasonable.
It’s all new and clean, but nothing fancy. The kind of supermarket Ryanair might open if it went into retail.
The late hotelier PV Doyle might be spinning in his grave at the thought of his lovely Coffee Dock cafe being turned into the fruit and veg aisle, but who knows whether the Doyle family won’t have the last laugh if they are able to buy the entire Jurys and Berkeley Court site back for a fraction of what they sold it for, post Nama.
The only problem with D4 Stores is that it doesn’t have planning permission. The Dunnes say they didn’t need planning, because the hotel always had a shop (selling newspapers and fags and the odd bit of Waterford Crystal), and that this shop is just a bit bigger. This won’t wash though. No matter that neighbours like veteran businessman Arthur Ryan of Penneys are on their side, and advised them to go right ahead into retail while the space was lying idle: rules are rules.
Gayle may be enterprising, but she is also arrogant and narky. When local TD Lucinda Creighton accused the Dunnes of flouting planning regulations, Gayle snapped back that she would give the politician a job stacking shelves after she loses the next election.
One feels that this is not the way to go about getting one’s way in the long run. Still, it will be business as usual in Ballsbridge for the time being. The Dunnes will quietly apply for retention, get their neighbours to write letters of support to Dublin City Council, and the whole thing will take a year to get sorted.
Whatever about the legalities of the situation, Gayle will get lots of support with her no-frills, can-do attitude. No doubt she is feeling the pinch, as are many in her supermarket’s catchment area. Times are tough in D4, as they are everywhere else, and many of its asset-rich residents are finding themselves starved of credit, and indeed all the other perks of a loose banking system.
Has anyone noticed, for instance, how shabby corporate umbrellas are getting? The old joke about the bank giving you an umbrella when the sun shines and taking it away when it rains couldn’t be more apt. When the economy was flying the city was full of well-fed executives dashing about with colossal golf umbrellas picked up at a client’s day out or a charity four-ball. The brollies got bigger and bigger, and sprouted double layers and two tone interiors. Some were so heavy, they needed to be carried with two hands.
Where are they now? Gone. No longer to be seen casually splayed cross the back windows of SE500s or stacked three deep in the closet at the Unicorn. No, they have gone the way of free desk organisers, credit card holders, Mont Blanc knock-off pens and handy leather folders discreetly branded by private banks.
An estate agent told me the other day that he had bought an umbrella for the first time in his 20-year career and he was keeping a very close eye on it. These days if you walk around the IFSC or up Grafton Street in the rain, all you’re likely to see are broken-down granny brollies, collapsed to one side or suddenly blowing themselves inside out. A handy metaphor for the economy or what?