Could tenants be Ireland’s unsung economic heroes?

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

I turn on the radio. “This is a story that needs to be told. People aren’t talking about this and they should be. It’s a national scandal that everyone knows about and nobody wants to talk about which could bring us all down together. So why is nobody talking about it?”

One of the more fascinating and less amusing things about living in Ireland is that upon hearing her broadcast those words, my mind floods with a torrent of possibilities to which she might be referring.

Is it GSOC? Patients on trolleys? Gerry Adams and Jean McConville? Young male suicide? The Bank Enquiry? The Tuam Babies? The discretional Medical Cards fiasco? The Justice Department Spokesperson? Church Sex Abuse (‘clerical abuse’ sounds like a number in the wrong column: these were crimes worthy of stronger description)? Phone tapping by an Garda Siochana? Quinn? Lowry? Patients on trolleys? Shatter?

I’m nowhere near running out of Irish scandals when the radio show host reveals the topic.

“So if you’ve any queries on mortgage arrears give us a call now.”

Mortgage arrears? He cannot be serious.

Yes of course it’s a national scandal, something which could bring us all down together. The situation is catastrophic, but we hear about it all the time, so what’s all this “nobody talking about it” stuff?

Don’t get me wrong, I feel for you. If your house is now worth less than you paid for it and you’re six months behind in the payments, life must be a pretty scary place. All swept up in the excitement of Ireland’s first flush of independent wealth, you bought a house during the Tiger years and then discovered the wealth wasn’t independent: it was European and American, reliant on a world situation.

Now you’ve got negative equity and I can think of little worse. So if I’m the caring compassionate human I aspire to be, why do I feel more angry than sympathetic?

Maybe it’s because I didn’t buy a house back then, because I wasn’t sure I could afford it. In 2007 I was earning about three times as much as I do today, but I’d seen the same shallow explosive boom years before, in Thatcher’s Britain, where everyone’s eyes glazed over with power and glory, just as they did here in Ireland.

So I stayed a renter and am still one to this day. Of course I’d love nothing better than to feel the master of my own home. Six years off sixty, I’d love to feel safe and secure in my house, knowing that I’ll never have to move again. I want to see the apple saplings I’ve planted grow to maturity, but life as a tenant can be volatile.

While the government is supporting the plight of mortgage holders, by encouraging their banks and building societies to award support, time and patience to their customers in financial difficulty, there is no such laxity in the world of the tenant.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.