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.