Vacant Possession

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An empty nest awaits its spring occupants.  This is a photo taken of one in the garden.  There will be many empty human nests in Ireland this Spring, and for many to come, without any hope of new occupants. Over a thousand mainly young people are (em)migrating from this country every week.  An exile of a generation, devastating  for a country of just over 4 million inhabitants.  But there was always going to be too many nests even if there was not going to be any emigration.  The whole human nest building orgy of the past decade, in  this country had become predicated on the assumption that more and more people would actually migrate to Ireland, to work, buy and rent houses. And this would go on for ever. But when the world wide economic crisis bored down on Ireland in 2007 the game was up.


This insane boom captivated the hearts of the Irish and it was itself at the heart of the Celtic Tiger.  Locally land that had only supported rough grazing for hundreds of years was selling for 2m euro an acre!  Small farmers fortunate to have land located in the right place and at the right time suddenly found themselves elevated to millionaire status. In a country without many indigenous industries construction became the driving force of the economy and the government was caught on it, hook, line and sinker to such an extent that it became a state subsidised boom, with tax costs to the state of some developments reaching as high as 43 percent. The economy ended up the slave to the construction industry  One in five people worked in the building industry.  At the height of the boom it accounted for nearly a quarter of the national GDP.  Bank lending to the construction industry rose by a staggering 1730 percent between 1999 to 2007. At the same time tax revenues from stamp duty and VAT funded the rest of the economy paying for the large and relatively well paid (as compared to European neighbours) public sector. 

The developers borrowed from the banks and the banks borrowed from the European Banks and the European Banks borrowed from the rich individuals and pension funds who bought into the boom, the bond holders. Endemic speculation underwrote the boom. Unease about the nature and development of the boom had been expressed amongst some observers for at least a decade before it began to unravel  but many of these voices were drowned out by the reassurances of economists and spokespeople connected  to  banks and building societies often echoed by compliant journalists who said there would eventually be a soft landing for the property market.  Bertie Ahern the prime minister of Ireland during the worst excesses of the boom even declared that people who cast doubt on the policies of the government were "sitting on the sidelines. Cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity.  I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide"  These same words now have a partcular poinancy - see my last post.

It was the perfect storm of easy money, lax financial regulation, croneyism based on the Irish tradition of clientist poitics, greed and denial.  

The legacy was empty hotels, ghost estates, half completed developments and a cost to the environment that you hardly ever hear mentioned or see quantified. 


The construction industry is a major emmitter of carbon dioxide. The remorseless increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is judged by the majority of scientists  to be driving global warming which will lead to climatic disruption and global food shortages. Because CO2 has long levity in the atmosphere the most lasting contribution of Ireland's  building binge will be the part that its pollution will play in changing the climate of this planet, to a less hospitable and less habitable state for generations to come.

Through this episode of building an excess of empty houses Ireland has made its own contribution to making our planet less of a home for ourselves and all of its life.


Perhaps we ought to listen more to the birds!

A ghost estate.

Lives thrown away

I'll be doing the rounds tomorrow collecting rubbiish for the tip.  The usual black bagged waste of modern society to be sunk in the earth at the local land fill. This regular ritual leads me to think about how our modern society is the most throw away in history. Someone digs up materials in one part of the world, they are then made into products that we are told that can't live without. They are made by people literally working to keep body and soul together in yet another part of the world.  The neatly packaged and value added products are then promoted for our consumption. And after we have bought and played with them and have then become bored or tired with them, they are trashed. Built in obselescence, the search for novelty, advertising, the creation of desire drives the global throw away society. From the original  hole in the ground in some far distant place, where the raw materials were extracted, to the final resting place in another hole in the ground near you or me.

Nothing of what I've just written is new and has been much more eloquently expressed elsewhere, but it got me thinking about the subject of suicide. Why now?  Because I heard a suicide recently. A single gun shot echoed in the distance, disturbing the quiet of a Sunday morning.  I heard it because I just happened to be outside at the time.  It transpired that a neighbour had tragically ended his life.

This was not an isolated event.  Hardly a day goes by without a discussion on the radio here in Ireland about the country's suicide rate, its possible causes and what can be done.  Some estimate that the rate has doubled since the ending of the "Celtic Tiger".  Each suicide, each tragedy will have its own story. In trying to find a reason distraught relatives, support organisations and government bodies may attribute  unemployment, debt, drugs, alcohol, relationship problems, health concerns, mental health problems or maybe in some cases they are left flummoxed, there does not seem to be a cause..  A particularly a high proportion of suicides are young adult males and a significant proportion are young people who are not ill, drug addicts and would be considered to have a "future".

I am minded of Japanese saying "Etiquette is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather".  For those who commit suicide a life felt as not worth living far outweighs a death which has become as light as feather.  But there must have always been times in Ireland when individuals felt that a life was not worth living  but it was more likely to be stoically borne  perhaps because of stronger traditional family ties than today and also because of the stigma of the sin of suicide.  Not to mention the fear of eternal retribution for that sin in the afterlife.

Getting back to waste. Now that we live in such a disposable society it might be that this factor has increasingly entered into the psyche of some people  to the extent that in that desperate dark place  they may feel  that their life is as disposable as an unwanted worn out piece of electronic gadgetry. Is there an element of throwing themselves away? Is it an extension of our throw away society?. Is this a contributory factor in the suicide rates of the Western World?

What do you think?  When healthy fit young people dispose of themselves is it because it is a reflection of the throw away society somehow internalised into themselves?