Do you wish celtic tiger never happened?

dcukhunter

Hope you dont mind me asking but how recently did you get your home?

We bought in 2003 with some help for deposit. I was working in construction for 10 years as well so we got a fixer-uper. It did take a good bit of work on the house but got there eventually. It also depends where you live. I am in Galway now but the cousin and myself are thinking of buying a house in Mayo for renting (much cheaper) the rent will nearly cover the morgage.As for 100% morgage I would strongly recommened against it. It was never a good idea all it done was temperally halt the dropping house price untill now.

kowloon

Things are so bad here, I just can't wait to get back to my mud hut paradise in Gambia :rolleyes:

Abi

dcukhunter wrote: »

Hope you dont mind me asking but how recently did you get your home?

We bought in 2003 with some help for deposit.

I think at this stage things were already rising, you saw the sense in making a move - and you did. That was very wise. You were also v lucky that you know your stuff and could do a place up. Mr abigayle couldnt screw a light bulb in :pac: I suppose theres a lot to take into account here. In 2003 I was 24 and only trying to scrape my way up from the bottom of the ladder, and now Im in a better position - it makes little difference since our lives changed so much having kids now and all.

The irony is, if I had the greens to spare I would love to get into doer uppers, and sell on. It would take a very special one for me to keep

On topic - I think circumstances were critical during the build up to the CT. Some won, some lost.

dcukhunter

Abigayle wrote: »

I think at this stage things were already rising.

Ya things were going up then. If I had more cop would have bought earlier for half the price, but I thought I knew everything then lol. It's only as you get older and look back at advise you were given and go ya I should have done that after all. If we could see the future though it would be too easy.

Affable

nyarlothothep wrote: »

But I think that the lack of warmth and the feeling of emptiness that people are talking about is something connected to the times we live in. A culture where success and fulfillment is often directly related to financial wealth and status is very lopsided. That kind of rhetoric is quite dominant in the media and in general life.

I agree with your sentiment, but unfortunately the American belief in this mentality is so unswerving and, as with most things, we Europeans end up going the same way.

Terry

I wish people would take full use of the qwerty keyboard in front of them and stop being too lazy to type in two extra letters when spelling the word "you".
Thread title edited for those who don't want to see txt spk on an internet forum.

taidghbaby

celtic tiger = good

irish people after celtic tiger = bad

kowloon

Terry wrote: »

I wish people would take full use of the qwerty keyboard in front of them and stop being too lazy to type in two extra letters when spelling the word "you".
Thread title edited for those who don't want to see txt spk on an internet forum.

You're fighting a losing battle Terry.
It's turning up in college essays these days. :rolleyes:

WoollyRedHat

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/lets-look-on-the-bright-side-and-consider-the-possible-advantages-of-the-coming-wave-of-downsizing-chic-1352797.html

Link to article

Riddle101

No, people are richer now and able to afford a comfortable lifestyle, no more kids dropping out of school and going to work at 13 and there's hardly and poverty over here anymore

I miss the Ireland of the early 90s. I was moved out of Dublin in '96 just before the big boom started and last year decided to move back up. But it's not the same anymore and that feeling hurts - when you go back expecting things to be the same and they aren't. So much so that I'm moving out again.

Seems I can't go one day without hearing some impatient driver blast a car horn and being someone who's admittedly xenophobic this new Ireland doesn't go in my favour. Then CIE got rid of my green buses and now the black/orange trains are literally getting the chop.

So yes, I do wish it never happened.

electric69

Yes i wish everyone would be living in shanty towns with no running water and everyone had really bad breath!
The smarterst people are always starting the bestest threads

Kev_ps3

I voted yes. How many people are actually that much richer because of it? The country is flooded with immigrants and our services are over-stretched. And not to mention the moral decline of the country.

constitutionus

Kipperhell wrote: »

You obviously don't know what high density is if you think all of Dublin suburbs are high density. Even Dublin city isn't particularly high density. It sounds like you just want to brag about how smart you are for what you bought. Apartments still make up a small portion of Irish property and are not actually that small if you compare them with other cities like Madrid, Rome or London. It really sounds like you have no clue.

i know enough not to moan about the lack of high density in dublin city when its against the planning laws ya muppet !

its no co incidence ALL the high density projects in the city center are in former industrial sectors like the quays at the port and the trainstations like connoly and heuston . and if these apartments are so great why did they have to rush legislation through to mandatorially increase their square footage in all future developments? because dublin is now over populated with one bedroom dog boxes with less that 900 sq ft in size with no long term storage capacity.

theyre of such high quality one company is now planning to demoslish blocks of em in dublin 8 to slap up offices instead. maybe your right, maybe i dont have a clue but i happen to think most homes last longer than 10yrs.

kowloon

Riddle101 wrote: »

No, people are richer now and able to afford a comfortable lifestyle, no more kids dropping out of school and going to work at 13 and there's hardly and poverty over here anymore

Dropping out at 13, yes.
Going out to work, not likely .

I predict a hint of disaster followed by a heavy downfall of DOOM!

ronbyrne2005

I think the "bad times" of the 1980s are overstated. Yes there was 15-20% unemployment for a few years but 80-90% of people were still working and even those unemployment figures were probably not a true reflection of reality as the black economy was much larger back then with people claiming multiple doles and working for cash as well.

For the vast majority of people the wage the had was enough to raise a family with one parent at home at least part time. We did'nt have all the fancy stuff the yanks and brits had but there was little material deprevation and much more social cohesion.
If you could'nt get a job you wanted here a short trip to UK usually yielded better results. When 85%+ of workforce on average during 80s having a job I find all these stories of well qualified people not being able to get a job hard to beleive. If you had a degree in engineering you might not have got the job you wanted but there were jobs there if you were prepared to accept less than your ideal job.
Wages have increased no where as much as cost of living when cost of housing is factored in. Quoting interest rates of 14+% is misleading as they were nominal rates on much smaller principal sums, wage inflation and general inflation ate into mortgage amounts.
Even at the "worst" part of the 1980s no one starved in Ireland and we were by world standards still very well off. There hasnt been REAL hard times in this country since probably the famine. Even people on the dole here today have a better living standard than 80% of worlds population (particularly asians and africans).
In saying all that, things have improved for most but not hugely. There has been a trade off. For less time with our kids and more hours at work and commuting we have opportunity to buy new car every year, fancier furnishings for our houses and more holidays,meals out etc. Basically I think the government could have managed the fruits of the boom a hell of a lot better.

board om

being 23 i dont think you actually understand how bad the 80's actually were in Ireland. banks repossessing houses every day, people having to move aborad just to get a job to support their family.

i worked with guys whose fathers were builders and truck drivers. and they were telling me that there fathers would work in the UK and send the money home, so they only ever saw them on holidays and xmas. i used to think that was just mad, not having your father live with you if your parents werent seperated.

also a bank manager was telling me once that people would have mortages and when they couldnt afford to pay them they would just put the keys in an envelope and post them to the bank. then they would just move to the UK or the US. they didnt even bother waiting for the back to repossess the house.

and can you imagine how much tax you would have been paying on your salary? i remember when the lower level of tax was 28% which was bad enough, and that was the late nineties. i dread to think what it was in the eighties.

board om

ronbyrne2005 wrote: »

I think the "bad times" of the 1980s are overstated. Yes there was 15-20% unemployment for a few years but 80-90% of people were still working and even those unemployment figures were probably not a true reflection of reality as the black economy was much larger back then with people claiming multiple doles and working for cash as well.

For the vast majority of people the wage the had was enough to raise a family with one parent at home at least part time. We did'nt have all the fancy stuff the yanks and brits had but there was little material deprevation and much more social cohesion.
If you could'nt get a job you wanted here a short trip to UK usually yielded better results. When 85%+ of workforce on average during 80s having a job I find all these stories of well qualified people not being able to get a job hard to beleive. If you had a degree in engineering you might not have got the job you wanted but there were jobs there if you were prepared to accept less than your ideal job.
Wages have increased no where as much as cost of living when cost of housing is factored in. Quoting interest rates of 14+% is misleading as they were nominal rates on much smaller principal sums, wage inflation and general inflation ate into mortgage amounts.
Even at the "worst" part of the 1980s no one starved in Ireland and we were by world standards still very well off. There hasnt been REAL hard times in this country since probably the famine. Even people on the dole here today have a better living standard than 80% of worlds population (particularly asians and africans).
In saying all that, things have improved for most but not hugely. There has been a trade off. For less time with our kids and more hours at work and commuting we have opportunity to buy new car every year, fancier furnishings for our houses and more holidays,meals out etc. Basically I think the government could have managed the fruits of the boom a hell of a lot better.

are you mad? there was nothing overstated about the eighties. there were no jobs to be had in the first place. and there was no 'short trip' across to the UK. there was no ryanair or arelingus budget flights back then. it was a good long trip on a ferry and most people didnt even have the money for that. the tax levels were through the roof and it was paying for all those unemployed people on the dole. where do you think dole money comes from? there were no builiding sites paying cash in hand to workers becuase nobody was building, because nobody had the money to buy the properties. interest rates on mortgages and loans would have been in high double figures. have you any idea what the percentage of emigration was back then? or why so many people had to leave school at 16 to start work? you really have no idea what you are talking about.

Lizzykins

I left school in 1980 at 18 and was accepted into UCD. Because of the poor prospects of jobs in Ireland I opted to take a secure well paid job in the bank. The problem for me and many others in the 80s was that there was no choice as to career-you prayed to God you did well enough in the Leaving to get into banks, civil service etc.

As others have said back then one decent income would keep a family in food, heat and a house. I was able to give up my job in the early 90s to stay home and mind kids. Damn all chance of many people to do that now unless they have spouses on about 70 or 80k of an income.

I have mixed feelings about the Celtic Tiger. Great for some but most of us in the middle who pay for everything are not all that well off. Delighted my kids have the opportunity to do whatever they want after leaving school.

PS. i seem to remember the LOWER tax rate was about 42% at some stage and 65% after about 10k of income!!! Mid 80s

Unshelved

Ireland in the 80's was just awful. I left school in 1983 and got a job in the bank - the rest of my friends went to university. By 1988 two people out of my class lived in Ireland - the rest were in the States (mostly illegally) or the UK. Every year after Christmas the news showed heartbreaking scenes of people at the airport saying goodbye to their families and returning to America or London or wherever - people could only really afford to come back once a year, or even once every two years, because plane fares were so high.

There were no late-night pubs and the only nightclubs were in Leeson Street (shudder). Hardly any bands ever played in Dublin because of the troubles in the North (every day you woke up to hear of a new atrocity up there on the news). The place was just grim. Poverty - real poverty - was everywhere. Plus we had a Taoiseach who told us to tighten our belts while he was spending our cash on Charvet shirts - all while a lot of the population were paying 60p in the pound income tax.

People who say that we're worse off now can't possible remember when mortgage interest rates went to 18% (at one stage in 1990 they were going up at a rate of nearly 1% per month). People now expect to be able to afford a house and keep up the two-holiday, two-car lifestyle and then crib when they can't - then, most people didn't have a job so there was no chance of anything ever unless they "took the boat".

Life in the 80's was rubbish. Anyone who says that things are worse now either doesn't remember what it was like, or is a friend of Charlie Haughey.

CerebralCortex

Too much too fast and poorly managed. I believe we needed less of a tiger and more of an ox both reliable and strong and less endangered. I guess everybody got a little bit put out in small way by the mad rush to the top.

gurramok

I left school in '92, only choice was going to college on a course i had to do even i didn't like it. There was no work available and even doubly so when you had the wrong address.
In 1995, i was on dole for a year. I'll never forget the literally hundreds of young people queueing up in the same exchange to sign on every tuesday i think it was. It would scare the bejayzus out of the 'Celtic Cubs' we have.

Whats changed from there to now is people have jobs now whether low or highly paid and above all they are servicing debt like cars, houses, fancy tv's, childcare etc.

Thats why some people seem to wonder where all their dosh is going to and feel they are struggling despite having 2 jobs in the household. Ireland has the highest personal debt in the EU, no wonder!

When you see all those newish cars on the road less than maybe 5yrs old, its a fact that the vast majority of them are been paid off on loans. Those people may 'feel' weathier with the new car but they are not really wealthier as its a 'buy now, pay later' culture.

Society has changed to being...Slave to the wage to pay off the debt

Red Hand

gurramok wrote: »

I left school in '92, only choice was going to college on a course i had to do even i didn't like it. There was no work available and even doubly so when you had the wrong address.
In 1995, i was on dole for a year. I'll never forget the literally hundreds of young people queueing up in the same exchange to sign on every tuesday i think it was. It would scare the bejayzus out of the 'Celtic Cubs' we have.

Whats changed from there to now is people have jobs now whether low or highly paid and above all they are servicing debt like cars, houses, fancy tv's, childcare etc.

Thats why some people seem to wonder where all their dosh is going to and feel they are struggling despite having 2 jobs in the household. Ireland has the highest personal debt in the EU, no wonder!

When you see all those newish cars on the road less than maybe 5yrs old, its a fact that the vast majority of them are been paid off on loans. Those people may 'feel' weathier with the new car but they are not really wealthier as its a 'buy now, pay later' culture.

Society has changed to being...Slave to the wage to pay off the debt

No wonder. Sure, most are working their ass so as to buy crap they don't need. I just don't get it. What's the story with the obsession for 08 cars? They do the same job as a bloody 98 car! Remember the German ambassador got in trouble a while back when he explained to a German business delegaton at his surprise at seeing so many 0-whatever reg cars when he came here first? It is totally stupid.

It's one thing to save for and then buy something that you have being saving for whether it's a nice car or a new car but...it's like people want stuff NOW!!! As in this very moment, or they will die!

Malice

I don't wish that the Celtic Tiger had never happened. I do wish that I could have graduated from college sooner so that I could have taken advantage of all that money that was supposedly around!

darkman2

Im 24 - here is a quote from a class in primary school in the early 90's I vividly remember to this day

Most of you will emigrate from this country for work

Thats what my Primary teacher (speaking to children under 12) said and I remember those words specifically. So those of you complaining now really need to realise how good we have it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

buckfast4me wrote: »

Just wondering, ok to start I am 23. (Ignoring complex economics and markets bla bla) I wish it never happened for the following reasons:

1) People have more money, but yet the average couple with young children can barely scrape by with the costs of houses, transport, childcare, food etc. Resulting in both parents usually having to work long hours just to get by. This wasn't the case when me and my brothers and sisters were raised (mid 80's, early 90's). My dad supported all of us in a middle-management job, not great money but paid the mortgage on a house in a middle-class area, esb, phone, heating bills etc (without the need for my mother to work) while living comfortably.

) When we were growing up, most of the best memories I have are being out and about with friends playing football, cycling, playing in neighbours back gardens, etc. Nowadays kids just get plonked in front of the xbox and turn into zombies. Maybe it's just my area but I rarely ever see kids out playing any more. That can't be good for them.

3) People were a lot more friendly in general. We hadn't as much money but we were happier, neighbours were more welcoming. There wasn't as much violence in society. There wasn't that air of "menace" around the place. Money turns people into assholes.

So that's it. Any thoughts/opinions?

Edit - might have been a bad idea posting this in AH and looking for serious replies, I am relatively new to boards so is there some sort of general "society" forum? If so feel free to move there. Thanks.

1) Basic econmics: as unemployment drops, people have more money, inflation rises.

2) This more due to the actions of the people convincing paresnts that there are paedophiles all over the place and the moment there kids step outside the door they'll be kidnapped, raped and killed.

3) We're basically greedy, selfish begrudgers. Always were (just without the means) and always will be.

Do I wish it had never happened? No. Scenarios 2 and 3 would have happened anyway.

bleg

i dunno where this idea of people becoming less friendly came from, sure your average joe won't say hi to you bu (i'm only 20) i have friends that are as reliable and trustworthy if not moreso than my parents have.

darkman2

Sometimes I feel a good recession is what these new middle class f***kwit begrudgers/uneducated people need for a kick up the arse. They honestly dont/cant understand the concept of what bad times really feel like. Why should they? They have never experienced it. You will soon. Then you will fully understand the concept of 'the haves' and the 'have nots' of which the vast majority will fall into the later description.

Rb

Lol @ 20% voting yes. Good job confirming peoples thoughts about the number of idiots floating around Boards lately.

Seriously, wtf? Who wants to go back to a time of massive unemployment, huge tax rates and a huge amount of tax revenue going out in the form of social welfare?

Unless, of course, that 20% represent the racists who feel we've lost our culture and are píssed at a load of foreigners coming and "taking our jobs".

kelle

de5p0i1er wrote: »

I miss the good old days everyone was poor and you could get a house for as little as £20,000. Things were much better back then.

Yes, but it was IMPOSSIBLE to get a mortgage! In the mid-80s, only the man's wage was considered (as it was assumed the woman may leave work once their first child was born), and he was only given up to 1 and three quarters times his basic wage (overtime was not taken into account). Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is exactly what I remember being told in LC Home Economics class back in 1987!