Wednesday 20 November 2013

Dublin house sales at three-year-high as ghost estates to be demolished by taxpayers...

It's nearly getting to the point where you could take old Gombeen Nation posts from the archive, change the date at the top, and pass them off as new.   Such is the convenience of  blogging about Groundhog Day Ireland.

Or maybe it's the same as the chief character in Flann O'Brien's "Third Policeman" who is doomed to make the same awful, and only just bearable mistakes, into perpetuity?

I nearly choked on my Tayto and milk breakfast last week when I read the following in The Irish Times:

"The number and value of house sales in Dublin is at a three-year high, according to a new survey from myhome.ie, which also shows that the total value of transactions in the first nine months of the year is up by 29 per cent on the same period last year."

Then there were some "experts" (remember those?) on radio doing their utmost to assure us that we were not looking at another bubble in the capital.    I should certainly hope not, we still haven't paid for the first one yet.    

At the same time ghost estates, built with government tax incentives and dodges (and about which the "opposition" of the time were strangely quiet) are going to be demolished at taxpayers' expense.

Then there's all the other stuff...

It's a strange little country where HSE top management and executives receive salary top-ups for making a bollocks of running our health service, and where it was recently decided that taxpayers should subvent RTE even more than they do at present... by a body that contains an ex-RTE head.  Failed bankers too, have enjoyed bonuses while judges have used the constitution to fight changes to their pensions.

 In Greece the Troika took the axe to such wasters, but Ireland is different I suppose.   

'Tis a quare place, alright.   


Back to Gombeen Nation main page

5 comments:

DC3 said...

It begs the question why the hell they want to live in Dublin, in the first place. It really is a bewildering kip. The Irish and the dopey cash foreigners are an anomaly of nature. The Irish have proven their worth over the last 5years, why anyone in their right mind would want to buy into this nest of weasels after all that, is staggering. What part of word KIP do they not understand?

Nenad said...

@DC3, living in Dublin has benefits. One is to get out of the country as fast as possible! ;)

ponyboy said...

The spectre of exorcising the ghost estates from the nation's inventory at the taxpayer's expense!!!!Ah shure let's all go down to the crossroads for a bit of a dance and a drop of the crayther and not be worrying about all that kind of thing. Oh and nobody tell Father Reilly where we're off to either cos as sure as the pope get's on his gimp outfit every night to amuse the vatican nuns, him and that other gutless wonder Shawneen Keogh will be down beating the couples out from behind the hedges and shure them only holdin hands. a mighty country alright - mighty!! GM - i still have a bit of spare room in the back of the camper AND I'm heading to spain and some warmth. Pony O Buachaillan

The Gombeen Man said...

@ DC3. I think the bit they have trouble with is K-I-P. Even when spelt out...

@ Ned. True enough. A facility I, and many of us, availed of in the past. Trouble is, it's also easier to get back into. ;-)

@ Ponyboy. Bejasus, 'tis a great little place altogether. For some, anyway.

That bolthole sounds more attractive by the minute, mate.

John said...

"Banality of evil" is a philosophical term meaning that evil occurs when ordinary individuals are put into corrupt situations that encourage their conformity. The phrase the 'banality of evil' was coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt after witnessing the trial of high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann

Is it that the Irish State being corrupt means that no laws apply?