The process of repossessing the homes of another 83 families for failure to meet mortgage payments commenced at the High Court yesterday. The ‘83’ figure was a record. But don’t worry if you missed it – it’ll be broken again next Monday as it has been for more Mondays than you can count.
 
Most of the big lenders (AIB, IIB, ACC, etc.) were in some way involved in yesterday’s proceedings. But one lender above all others – Start Mortgages – jumps off the list for the frequency with which it is mentioned: of yesterday’s 83 homes, Start is looking for possession of 29 of them. Checking through the list of High Court proceedings going back for months it seems that Start (who’s motto is ‘Open Minded Lending’) have had the worst luck in getting people to pay them back what they think they're owed.    

As everyone knows, Start specialises in charging people with dodgy credit ratings way over the odds for property backed loans. This is from their website.

But I had no idea that Start gives back to the community by sponsoring soccer teams for homeless people:

So they’ll take your home away from you but, don’t worry, you’ll get your game.

I think I'm representing all the open minded people of Ireland when I say we should kiick Start out of the country, take over the mortgages they've issued on family homes, let the families involved stay in these homes, and have them (the affected families) pay the rest of us back whatever they can afford, whenever they can afford it.

Anyone with a Start story to relate? info@garrymiley.com

This useful piece of background information on  what 'Nama' really means comes courtesy of a correspondent:

... shared land ownership... praise poetry...

Everybody but everybody seems to already know what’s in or what isn’t in the proposed legislation on the establishment of the National Asset Management Agency. Don't expect anything too Pulitzer-Prize-winning-worthy when we see the draft on Wednesday: by all accounts even the people involved in putting it together know that the document doesn't come anywhere near to dealing with the problems it set out to address. 

First, there’s the matter of assessing the value of the assets that Nama will buy from the banks. Now, this isn’t just one single problem all on its own, it’s actually a whole bunch of idiosyncratically screwed up situations. Contrary to what’s been reported in the general media, value assessment is way more complicated than things simply being worth 'half of what they were worth two years ago’.  While some of the alleged assets were the product of relatively responsible exercises in capitalism and might end up someday being worth something to somebody, others were the result of speculation that was so beyond belief that there was every chance they would have failed even if the Age of Collective Madness had continued. The chances of these latter alleged assets ever being worth anything to the Irish taxpayer within the next twenty years are slim to none.

Then there’s the question of planning. Many of even the most secure alleged assets have a ‘the project will be viable provided we get permission for the tall bit’ clause. As I mentioned on this site in the past, in order to get over this problem, the folks advising on the set-up of Nama have already sought powers for the new agency to award planning permissions in much the same way that the DDDA currently does (i.e. by bypassing the planning process and avoiding pesky local authority policies (not to mention the entire democratic process)). While the Indo said at the time that the Government had rejected such an idea, its rumoured that that Nama will have some recognisable-through-the-disguise DDDA-type characteristics.

Other problems the legislative framers are having difficulty with include: the government says that the success of Nama will very much depend on people not tripping it up by bringing their personal beefs to the courts: this is a totally unavoidable scenario. There are an infinite number of cases where members of consortia, partnerships, etc., who were all kissy-kissy when the alleged assets were being put together, are now at such loggerheads that staying out of court simply isn't a possibility (industry people are aware of situations where, for example, the line of connection between the owners of troubled development sites and the folks who ended up with the money isn't al that direct. Hopefully, Nama will know how to avoid ending up with responsibility for these kinds of projects.) Then there’s the question about the legal proceedings Nama itself might have to pursue if it discovers that alleged assets in its possession are more ‘alleged’ than it originally thought (where, for example, the bank involved in organising the loan may have actually contributed to the difficulties of a particular asset before passing it on). And its also worth mentioning that not even the most optimistic of real estate speculators supports the Government's idea of paying above current market value for alleged assets on the basis that they'll probably be worth more in five year's time - there's every possibility that these same assets will be worth less. 

The Irish people are completely ignorant of what Nama is about. They've no idea what's coming down the pike.

Limerick
A city in survival mode
Jochan Stahnke


4th May 2009 In Limerick, conditions similar to those in the third world continue to dominate- at least that was the opinion of representatives from the petitions board of the European Parliament, who recently greeted a delegate of businesspeople and local politicians from the West-Ireland city in Brussels.

In Limerick there is by far the lowest priced heroine in north Europe, two warring, weapon-armed gangs and one of the highest murder rates in the European Union. The city of 90,000 residents is also economically disadvantaged. For instance, the closure of the biggest employer in the region, computer manufacturer Dell, at the end of the year will mean the loss of thousands of workstations.

“It is bad at present”

Limerick’s Mayor John Gilligan, with his well-fed face and red cheeks, doesn’t look as if the matter has caused him sleepless nights. In June of last year Gilligan was elected; he is favoured because he does not belong to any party. Here in west Ireland he was born, here he has worked for eighteen years as city councillor. From the balcony outside his office Gilligan has a beautiful view of the Shannon, Ireland’s longest river; on the left-hand side lays the ruins of King John’s castle, on the right a glimpse of Ireland’s meadows. Around the corner, a restaurant advertises its menu as a “Recession buster”. “It is bad at present”, says Gilligan. “And there’s also one thing I absolutely don’t want to sugar-coat, that it will get worse.” In comparison with last year the number of unemployed in Limerick has risen 70 per cent. Now, the official rate of unemployment stands at 12 per cent. Before the end of the year, Gilligan expects a rate of 25 per cent.

Cats, dogs and ponies at every corner

Estates such as Moyross now already constitute over 50 per cent. Above all, the conditions there were what motivated the scolding from Brussels. It cannot continue like this, ranted a Romanian representative. He is not totally out of place in saying so: At the street-corner entering St. Mary’s park stands a burnt-out car in front of a row of houses, all of which are boarded up.

Signposts with the inscription “For Rent”, often visible in the pretty centre of Limerick, are no longer being displayed. Young mothers stand on the streets in dirty tracksuits and smoke, quite a few of them overweight. Rubbish is stacked up in front of houses; in some places it is burnt, so that a sweet and sour smell hangs over the estate. Everywhere children play, cats stray, dogs bark, and ponies search for something edible- they are tied up anywhere possible here.


5,000 people have literally nothing

On the main street, five men have an evidently spontaneous trotting race, their horses are in wretched condition. The police, who within a half hour have come and gone four times, seem to take no exception to it. They have more important issues to prevent: A couple of weeks ago an 18-year-old boy was stabbed to death here. Frank O’Dea, the priest in Corpus Christi church in Moyross, buried him. “There are 5,000 people living here who have literally nothing.” says Father Frank. No café, no supermarket, no sunning studio, not even a pub is there here.

And since 2001, a murderous war has rioted in Moyross between two gangs which has already claimed the lives of many victims and earned Limerick the name “Stab city”. In Moyross, the Keane-Collopies govern, while in Balinacurra-Weston in south Limerick the Dundon-McCarthys rule. As weaponry the gangs own Kalashnikovs, Uzis and grenades. Over the rugged thousands of meters of Irish coastline the gangs bring in drugs; for the region around Galway, the Irish coastguard only have one ship at their disposal. Down along the Shannon, cocaine, heroine and weapons arrive into Limerick. “An ancient city well versed in the art of war” is the motto under Limerick’s crest, a motto which today has an eerie validity.

“Let them have their grenades, we’ll get them all”

The gangs themselves, however, are not always well experienced. A month ago a gang leader shot him self in the head accidentally while he boasted his weapon at a party. Last year the Dundon-McCarthys shot a boy who had suffered panic attacks after having a murder order implemented for him and threatening to inform the police. In November, a well-known rugby player was murdered because he looked like a member of an enemy gang. “Let them have their grenades, we’ll get them all” says Mayor Gilligan as he lies his feet up on the desk in his office, where there is already a glass of wine. A hundred-strong armed police force has already been introduced as fortification since a few months ago. On Thursday of last week, 40 houses in Balinacurra-Weston were searched. Gilligan says he firmly believes in a positive future: “We have already survived famine, we will also endure this crisis.” In the lobby of the city hall there lies an open book of condolences- at the start of April, 35-year-old Roy Collins was murdered outside a pub in Balinacurra-Weston. The businessman, whose family owns the pub together with an adjacent shopping centre, had forbidden the Dundon-McCarthys to sell drugs on his ground.


Twice a day a car is burned

Marty Mannering is a fireman. His station is situated on Mulgrave Street, directly beside the prison. “Today I put out two burning cars, a completely normal day” says the 44-year-old family man. He and his colleagues don’t receive much support. The fire engine is strewn with dents and scratches, the result of countless stone attacks from angry or bored youths. Five years ago, Mannering was him self injured by a stone. For ten days thereupon he lay in hospital. For seventeen years, Mannering has lived in Limerick, nine of which were with the fire brigade. He and his colleagues are only deployed out to Moyross and Balinacurra-Weston as long as they are with a police escort. In doing so they get meanwhile less money than they were previously payed: on average, 7.5 per cent of the salary of an office worker in Ireland’s public service will be withheld as a so-called pension contribution, moreover, taxes have been raised, such as value added tax. Mannering says he receives only two thirds of his earlier salary. It is not expected that things will soon be better in Limerick. For the last two years it has been common knowledge here that Dell is building a factory double the size of the Limerick branch in the Polish region of Lodz, workers from Limerick were also involved in it. Poland is alluring, with its low corporate taxes, lower minimum wage and EU aid money- all factors which helped the initial “Celtic tiger” in Ireland, before wages, the cost of living and real estate rose dramatically. Dell has already given notice to its 1900 workers in Limerick. “And for each of these work stations, ten others hang on the ancillary firms”, says Mayor Gilligan.

Nobody pours out coffee in the labour exchange

His family, just as well, stand as a symbol of the crisis in the city, which has meanwhile also reached the middle-class: his son-in-law was employed by Dell but he was also let go. Gilligan’s daughter worked with Vodafone and she received her notice three weeks ago. “What should they do, they have a mortgage, two cars and two children”, says Gilligan. Neither of them have any prospects of new positions. Added to that is the fact that Limerick expects no new investors. Gilligan’s recipe against the crisis is as pragmatic as it is doubtful. “Now we go into survival mode.”

He leads those who have now lost their place in the labour exchange, among them many Poles. Tomasz Smietanka (30) worked with computer manufacturer Banta but is without work since January. However, he does not want to go back to Poland- the wages there are hardly any better than what he pockets here in unemployment benefits. Each person in Ireland who has lost their job less than a year ago is entitled to €800, which is the situation for Tomasz. Francis McMahon (59), on the other hand, lost his position as an aircraft technician three years ago already. Earlier, says McMahon, the people of the city would have queued up by Rooney, an estate agent, because everybody wanted to buy shares. There, the waiting customers were even poured coffee. Now, those same customers wait a hundred meters further north on Dominic street at the job centre. But nobody is offered coffee there.

Having reached the half way point in 2009, I thought I’d have a quick look at a few planning application numbers from around the country for January to June.

In Clare, there were 680 planning applications to the end of June. This compares to 1750 for the same period in 2007. On quick perusal, applications are for no more than extensions and retentions.

Galway City had 250 applications, down from 500 in 2007. Cork County is down from 9200 in 2007 to 6100 this year. In both cases, very few applications were for anything more than a house or an extension. Dublin City Council, too, has very little going on: 3350 applications this year down from just over 3950 two years ago. Not much difference numberswise, big difference scalewise.

From what I can make out on Limerick County Council's website, there were about 740 applications to the end of June 09 compared to 1400 for the first half of 08.

Many thanks to Deputy Terence Flanagan for his relentless efforts in obtaining answers to some questions I put to the Public Accounts Committee on the cost overruns on the Ballymun Regeneration Project. It took him two years.

I’m not going to go over the whole thing again but, basically, the project to complete the reconstruction of Ballymun is years overdue and hundreds of millions of Euro over budget. Many moons ago the Comptroller and Auditor General published a report which, in my view, kinda pulled its punches in explaining what is an epic of tiger era indulgence and mismanagement. So, I composed 14 questions which I thought the Comptroller’s report had failed to address and sent them, via Terence, to the PAC.

Earlier this week, we got a response from Ciaran Murray, Managing Director of Ballymun Regeneration Limited. I won’t bore you (yet) with his ten page reply. Here’s a little amuse bouche.

Around about 2000, and amid a great deal of fanfare, it was announced that a €1 point something billion business and technology park would form a 100 acre centrepiece to the larger Ballymun regeneration project. It was to be co-developed by Green Properties and Ballymun Regeneration Ltd.

It went by the wall.  But not before Green Properties had run up some costs. I wanted to know how much of these costs the taxpayer had handed over to Green.  This is how Ciaran Murray responded.

'... A sum of € X  (see footnote) million was paid to the Developer on dissolution of the proposed joint venture.  €Y million of the figure related to the actual costs incurred by the Developer in acquiring 29.6 Acres of land, the title to which has been transferred to Dublin City Council and is an asset of the Regeneration Company.  The balance of €Z million was paid to the Developer representing 50% of the actual third party professional fees incurred by the joint venture in developing a Local Area Plan and obtaining planning permission on the lands.  As part of the Dissolution Agreement the Regeneration Company acquired the sole rights to use any designs developed and the benefit of the Planning Permission obtained.  All of this expenditure was funded through internal capital receipts generated by BRL through property disposals and only actual vouched costs were recouped in exchange for the acquisition of valuable assets.'

Foornote: Confidentiality clause inserted in joint venture Dissolution Agreement (settlement of high court proceedings) at the request of the Developer.

The developer was Green Properties. X is said to be somewhere around €6 million but I’d be interested in hearing what the exact figure is.

The €X million cost to the taxpayer doesn’t, of course, take into account the amount Ballymun Regeneration itself spent on wages, administration, legal fees, consultants fees, etc. before the business was wound up. What are we talking about here - €2m maybe €3m? We’re getting into electronic voting territory on this one element of the project alone.  

Well, kittens, and in particular FPL. I missed this telling sentence from an article by Joe Brennan in the Irish Independent last week which suggests that the steering committee advising on the establishment of NAMA have reached a worrying conclusion. Namely, NAMA won’t be any more effective in turning around bad debt sites than the average liquidator unless planning permissions for developments of unrealistic scale are guaranteed (for up to fifteen years): 

‘The steering committee behind the setting up of the so-called 'bad bank' had looked at obtaining powers to deploy compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) and grant planning permission, similar to that enjoyed by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. However, it is understood that the Attorney General, who is also on the committee, advised that building such overarching powers into NAMA legislation could drown the whole process in a quagmire of legal proceedings...’

In other words as FPL has already correctly pointed out in his/her comment on the last post, and despite the concerns of the Attorney General (who'll be overlooked), the whole country will soon become a giant DDDA. What an irony: the price we have to pay for fifteen years of terrible planning is fifteen years of worse planning. Or no planning. Or maybe I mean, anti planning. Ooh la la.  

Here’s the full piece:

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/nama-wont-be-given-any-super-powers-to-deal-with-borrowers-1783097.html

All the jibber jabber in the financial pages and the opinion columns of the newspapers about ‘the best way to go about establishing fair valuations’ for bad debt sites is completely irrelevant. The only way to establish a valuation on any of these sites is to make an assumption about the amount of development which might be permitted. Which means that if the tax payer’s support is to be rewarded, all the NAMA sites must be developed beyond even the levels the original purchasers had in mind.   

On the question of whether we the Irish taxpayer should be putting €4B into shoring up the ailing Anglo Irish Bank, I thought the chap who asked Alan Dukes ‘do you ever get fed up trying to explain complex banking issues to the (stupid) [my parenthesis added] public?’ on Questions + Answers last week might have hit the nail on the head, but in a way he himself wasn’t intending.

Hopefully not being too unfair to this gentleman, it seemed to me that what he was trying to do in his question was imply that if the ordinary Irish citizen better understood how necessary it is when dealing with international bankers to maintain an air of scheming connivance and, furthermore, if we only understood the sanctity of the secrecy and unaccountability which characterizes the world of big finance we would, in order to allow the next financial ponzi scheme take root and destroy us afresh, let retired-politicians-turned-bankers fling money into a black hole in quiet acquiescence. While Dukes dutifully replied that no, on the contrary he quite enjoyed trying to convince the reluctant public of why it should continue to live only to support the banking system, I thought I sensed that he actually really did appreciate the questioner's intention: yes folks, he appeared to hint, little people don’t understand what this kind of thing is all about and are better off leaving it to those who do. Like him.

If we accept both Alan Dukes’ and Mary Coughlan’s assertion that the main reason for supporting Anglo is to protect our national reputation then wouldn’t this mean we’d be spending an equivalent amount of money convincing the rest of the civilized world that we have no tolerance for the frocked child abusers who terrorized a previous generation? (The Ryan report is already drifting into a convenient haze...) And, in any event, does anyone really, really believe that, when a situation can be exploited for a quick buck, international banks care a jot for a country’s financial reputation? In five years time when the money starts to flow around these parts again, they’ll be back.
 
In short, the Government is simply lying to us about what it’s doing. The reason why they’re intent on supporting Anglo Irish Bank is because they’ve been told to do so by Brussels. And this is what really lies at the heart of the Lisbon Treaty: the freedom to let money do what money wants to do.   

Meanwhile, the cause of all this mess – a planning system whose only obvious effect in recent years has been, not to improve our way of life in any measurable fashion, but only to create a little bubble within which the spectacularly greedy indulged themselves in a diabolic orgy – remains fully intact, its failings completely oblivious to a cabinet of demagogues, high on dema but low on gogue.

And now I need a drink.

The Dublin Dockland Development Authority shares its acronym with the better known Demolition Derby Drivers Assocition. Whose motto is 'We Crash'.

I just finally read Justine McCarthy’s piece in the Trib from several weeks back regarding the state of play in The Docklands of Sodom and Gomorrah. http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/apr/26/ddda-deals-to-be-investigated/?q=DDDAWell done, Justine – you don’t write a piece as carefully pitched as that one was without having a good idea of what’s really going on down there. I look forward to the fruits of your further investigations – perhaps you might just be the person to finally explain to the rest of us the inner workings of that most inscrutable of quangoes that is the DDDA. For example, it would be useful for us all to know how a teeny, tiny little organisation which happens to have life or death power over some of the greediest, sharpest, money grabbinest bastards in the country manages, without much public accountability, to keep everyone happy and away (relatively speaking) from the courtrooms they so otherwise adore? I’ve always felt that the folks at the DDDA must have the moral fibre of members of certain religious orders, especially when faced with circumstances which might lead those of us with weaker juridical constitutions astray. Circumstances like, for example, when U2 decided to take a greater (that is to say ‘financial’) interest in the tower which was proposed to bear their name; or when the designers of the competition winning original U2 Tower, BCDH, were shafted and (allegedly, etc.) owed an absolute fortune in unpaid fees; or the occasson when Liam Carroll was satisfied to accept a reduced level of development on the site he owned right next door to the one where the revised Norman Foster designed U2 tower of awfulness was due to be built? Or the time the same Liam Carroll was fortunate enough to have the development potential of another piece of land he owns within the DDDA's jurisdiction suddenly multiply?

This is from the latest Nenagh Guardian:

'A Ballina man is appealing for people experiencing planning problems in North Tipperary to contact him with a view to setting up a forum on the matter.

Patrick Clarke has spent six years battling for planning permission in Ballina. He says his case is just one of too many affecting people all over the county, who Pat alleges are being treated unfairly by the local planning authority. Pat and his wife Martina McKeogh have been renting in Ballina for over two years with their four young children, who all attend Ballina NS. They want to build a home in the area and do have local connections on Martina’s side, she being able to trace her family history in the area back over eight generations.

Six years ago the couple were offered a site on the family farm, only to discover that they could not proceed with their plans to build a house as they did not meet ‘local need’ criteria. “Because neither of us were born locally nor lived locally for 10 years we are excluded from building our family home on the family farm,” Pat says... he has been repeatedly refused planning permission by the local authority, whose interpretation of the local need policy he finds too “black and white,” offering no room for discretion in individual circumstances.

The Ballina resident believes many other people are experiencing similar problems in North Tipperary, and that local politicians are either unable or unwilling to help. He’s now appealing for people to contact him on the matter. “You are not alone,” Pat says. “There is strength in numbers. If you wish to do something about this then now is the time to act.”

Contact Pat on 087 9020321 or email  mailto:pclarkeirl@eircom.net

Anyway. So far so typical: a ridiculously discriminatory planning policy, which wouldn't last on the statutes in the US or any Continental European country for the smallest fraction of a second, being exposed for the national embarrassment it is.

However, the situation must be viewed in the context of a separate North Tipp application for a family home which was recently approved but for which there was an alleged question as to that applicant's qualification under the 'local need' rule. It has come to Pat Clarke's attention that the applicant on the 'successful' application couldn't really be considered a local but doeshave alleged connections with a local TD as well as a senior planner. Whether this fact in any way influenced the outcome of the planning application, as Clarke suggests in a letter to all TDs in the country that it might have, is something I couldn't possibly comment on.  

Pat is hoping that people in the North Tipp area for whom his situation may resonate will contact him before the local elections on Friday and assist him with an email campaign. Here's his contact information again: Pat Clarke, 087 9020321 orpclarkeirl@eircom.net

From John Gormley’s statement yesterday announcing the new legislation which will improve planning around the country:

“A sound development plan is the key to ensuring good planning at local level. Decisions taken at development plan stage affect all other planning decisions” said the Minister. A key element of the Bill is the introduction of a requirement for an evidence based core strategy in development plans which will provide relevant information as to how the plan and the housing strategy are consistent with regional planning guidelines and the National Spatial Strategy…’

Apart from sounding like something which well meaning Dissenter  industrialists say about improving the lot of their workers in Dickens novels, what does the phrase ‘evidence based core strategy’ actually mean? The ‘evidence based’ approach is the latest iteration of a particularly English life-simplifying illusion which begins with David Hume, courses through John Stuart Mill and any number of Victorian men of letters and now, in a new line which traces itself back to 1920s Oxford, has found voice in Gordon Brown’s administration. It’s an approach that distrusts imagination, personality, spirit and all those other things which make us human (and Irish) (in an article in the Guardian lately, an ‘evidence based’ commentator criticised some new British Government initiative as being ‘overly reliant on ambition’). The only compelling evidence that I personally would base a planning policy on is that there’s no evidence that the English planning system is the one we want to adopt.  More Kant, Minister, and lest cant (sorry, couldn't resist...).

The new Planning Bill was, of course, announced in advance of the Local elections as part of a shameless piece of Green Party self promotion. (In this morning’s Times, a piece about the proposed planning changes is so fawning it feels like one of those ‘advertisement features’: it’s actually an ‘exclusive interview’.) And that's about all you can say about it - it's more a party position paper that a thought through piece of legislation.

The planning system in this country needs radical, radical, radical change. There isn’t any hope whatsoever that the necessary change can be delivered by our current bunch of political leaders or, indeed, that the change can happen under our political system. What are we supposed to do?