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Stories from the Celtic Tiger Years *Mod Warning in OP PLEASE READ*

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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,220 ✭✭✭✭Wanderer78


    madmaggie wrote: »
    I worked on an assembly line in a factory. My co workers were going shopping in New York and skiing every year. New cars and better clothes than me. I couldn't figure it out.

    free money called credit!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,702 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    One time, 'for similar money' you could have bought a chateau in the South of France with its own vineyard for the price of the 2-bed in Dublin.

    I remember thinking 'there's definitely something not right about this'.

    I had that thought in 2008 when Clare County Council put up for sale at a public auction a tiny public toilet on the Lahinch coastline. The opening bid was 120,000 but several investors got into a bidding war at the auction and drove up the price to 400,000. The media quickly dubbed it 'the Loo with a View' but this was basically a tiny concrete shack, everyone was stunned that someone would pay 400k for a dilapidated toilet, it was a real WTF? moment
    padd b1975 wrote: »
    I remember flicking through the match programme before the 2004 All Ireland Final.

    That shyster Michael Lynn had taken an add out to flog some foreign apartments with the help of two 'celebrities'.

    They were none other than Rui Costa (famous Portuguese footballer so fair enough) and..... Eh...... Willie Joe Padden!

    Sounds similar to Louise and Jamie Rednapp selling apartments at Belmayne in Clare Hall around that time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 749 ✭✭✭tjhook


    I do remember David McWilliams on his morning Newstalk show in 2004ish. He was basically saying that Irish property was way overvalued, and that he had been predicting prices to come down for ages, but it hadn't happened. He said he just didn't understand it, and I could almost see him shrugging.

    I was fairly conservative - had a very good deposit, got a mortgage for far less than I could have on the basis that I wanted to be confident I could repay it. In hindsight, we're paying for those who took all they could without thinking, so more fool me. Maybe I should just have done the same. This country penalises the cautious to protect the reckless.


  • Posts: 3,689 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    ^^^This.

    There are indeed some patron saints of the reckless in the present day, just as there is a reveered patron saint of drug dealers in Mexico.

    Praised for their promotion of high risk wheeling and dealing.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,587 ✭✭✭pgj2015


    I left school in 2002, went working on the buildings straight away, two builders actually offered me a job on the same day, one rang me the other came to the house to ask me did I want a job. That is how easy it was to get a job at the time.

    I worked for 4 years on the sites making decent money for a young guy, more than some of my family members who were in professional jobs, i was just laboring on sites. I left in 2006 to go to college as I had enough of life on the sites, tried two different courses 2006-2008, dropped out of both of them and was on social welfare, had a great time from 2006 to 2008 on 56 euro a week but I had a lot saved from the years working on the sites, I was in Dublin a lot going out and going to gigs, spending a fortune.


    Then went to college in 2008, where I rode out the recession from 2008 to 2014.

    The lads leaving college to work on sites were right, make the money when the sun shines, you have all your life to go to college.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,016 ✭✭✭Blush_01


    I was too young for the PIPs or whatever in the late 90s / early 00s, but I was the perfect age to graduate into the recession. That was some craic, can't wait to see what this one is going to be like.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,702 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Does anyone remember Derek Quinlan and Custom House Capital during the boom? They were an investment firm and Quinlan was supposedly a genius when it came to making people money. They specifically targeted the professional classes to invest with them, I know lots of doctors were tapped up as were solicitors and barristers. Their reputation for making unbelievable returns went around these industries and lots of legal and medical professionals were borrowing from the banks and pumping huge sums of money into them in the promise of huge returns. It was said the fund was worth over 1 billion at one point but it was all built on the house of cards that was property. Apparently many Irish judges had invested and got badly burnt in the crash, this was said to be the main reason why judges refused to take a pay cut during the recession- even though they were on 300k+ a year they couldnt afford a pay cut such was their debts from their investments that went belly up.

    Anyway four of Custom House Capitals investment managers were up in the District Court last week charged with running a fraudulent investment scheme. These people were filthy rich back in the Tiger but in court two of them produced statements of means showing they are broke and off the back of that the judge granted them both free legal aid.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,223 ✭✭✭Canyon86


    I worked in a hardware store as a student, during the tiger,

    The amount of stock given out on 'tick' was unreal, and the volumes of stock we were shifting was nuts,


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 70,172 ✭✭✭✭L1011


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Sounds similar to Louise and Jamie Rednapp selling apartments at Belmayne in Clare Hall around that time.

    The Belmayne print ads were basically HD versions of the setups of the softcore they used to show on Bravo in the early 00s. People (mostly women but some men) draping themselves over kitchen equipment.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,702 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Oh yeah it was a crazy time, Premier League footballers and their WAGs using sex to sell apartments in Darndale.

    From the Indo 2007
    FIRST it was frolicking beside the fridge. Now a celebrity couple are being used by Dublin developers to shift a few houses and apartments.Stanley Holdings flew in English pop star Louise Redknapp and former Liverpool footballer Jamie Redknapp in an effort to convince homebuyers that they can enjoy a glamorous lifestyle near Donaghmede on Dublin's northside.

    The couple, who charge an appearance fee of around 20,000, are the latest weapon in the company's marketing arsenal to promote its 1.2bn development. Their efforts are being interpreted as another sign that developers are struggling to sell units as the property market cools.

    The developer recently caused a stir with steamy advertisements that seemed to suggest you could improve your sex life by buying a property in the Belmayne estate. They also suggested that it might be best to go for a home that was not overlooked. Ads included a couple entwined on top of a kitchen cupboard. The strapline read: 'Something's cooking @ Belmayne'.
    Another ad showed scantily-clad women lounging on a bed as a man looked on, with the catchline 'After hours @ Belmayne'.

    In the developer's latest publicity stunt, the Redknapps partied in Dublin last night at the launch of phase two of the 2,300-home estate. Prices range from 275,000 for a one-bedroom apartment to 365,000 for a three-bedroom apartment.
    https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/louise-joins-steamy-house-ads-to-liven-up-a-flat-market-26267167.html

    And nowadays many of those same apartments in Belmayne are now social housing managed by Cluid, its a long way away from what was advertised.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,950 ✭✭✭ChikiChiki


    Sky King wrote: »
    IM GOING TO BUY A HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT AND USE THE RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT THAT OUT AND USE THAT RENT TO BUY ANOTHER HOUSE AND RENT IT OUT

    I lolled out hard at this. There are a few villages across Leitrim and Roscommon with mini housing estates in them lying empty. It's usually a case of a local fella who worked hard and made a few quid, coming back and ultimately showing off.

    No thought put into the actually viability of such vanity projects.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 84,052 ✭✭✭✭Atlantic Dawn
    M


    tjhook wrote: »
    This country penalises the cautious to protect the reckless.


    We don't have a competitive mortgage market in this country because the entire system of repossession is geared in favour of the person taking the piss with payments. Sit on your hole for a year plus without paying with no threat at all of eviction. The many pay for the few, joke of a country. Banks here are fine with current regime as it means no foreign banks will touch the place.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 775 ✭✭✭Musefan


    My memory is of older siblings being able to purchase property at age 23/34 with one income.

    Took me a good 8 years more than that when it was my turn.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 697 ✭✭✭Lockheed


    hoodie6029 wrote: »
    And another one I just remembered, 05/06- whatever county-21 reg Mini's for the 'darling's' 21st.
    Unfortunately there is no puke emoji to end this post on!

    https://www.motorcheck.ie/free-car-check/?vrm=05D21
    https://www.motorcheck.ie/free-car-check/?vrm=05MH21

    This is actually gas.. repeat for different counties and 05/06, it was one hell of a trend


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,069 ✭✭✭antimatterx


    Musefan wrote: »
    My memory is of older siblings being able to purchase property at age 23/34 with one income.

    Took me a good 8 years more than that when it was my turn.

    It's not that hard. I'll be able to do that in about a year and I'll be 25.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,172 ✭✭✭cannotlogin


    I was in college for most of it but lads all around me who had quit school to go into construction were easily clearing a grand a week despite having little or now experience or being fully qualified.


    All building massive 5 bed houses in the country despite being single & no one in the property but them, brand new landrovers in the driveway, breakfast rolls every morning, in pub all weekend.

    Most of then left for Australia and haven't come back.


  • Posts: 6,192 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    ChikiChiki wrote: »
    I lolled out hard at this. There are a few villages across Leitrim and Roscommon with mini housing estates in them lying empty. It's usually a case of a local fella who worked hard and made a few quid, coming back and ultimately showing off.

    No thought put into the actually viability of such vanity projects.

    Come to think of it....a village near me ,had a field zoned for building (like 12 or 16 houses and mini shop centre),it sold for 1.25 million



    That village at present has a population of circa 20,and that field was reseeded into grassland a few weeks ago


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,863 ✭✭✭buried


    The most funniest aspect concerning the Celtic Tiger Years is encountering the shooting star wishing snobs that today would LOVE for it all to kick off again, the ones that like to think the days of buying all the ridiculous $hit that you don't really need is all somehow going to come back and manifest itself as some sort of twisted normal, when there is about as much chance of it returning as the Mesozoic

    "You have disgraced yourselves again" - W. B. Yeats



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,871 ✭✭✭✭Leg End Reject


    Come to think of it....a village near me ,had a field zoned for building (like 12 or 16 houses and mini shop centre),it sold for 1.25 million



    That village at present has a population of circa 20,and that field was reseeded into grassland a few weeks ago

    That sums it up!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,964 ✭✭✭John_Rambo


    Some amazing stories on this thread, some really sad ones and some funny ones too.

    I'm really going to have to stop perching my sunglasses on my head.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,087 ✭✭✭✭FixdePitchmark


    John_Rambo wrote: »
    Some amazing stories on this thread, some really sad ones and some funny ones too.

    I'm really going to have to stop perching my sunglasses on my head.

    To be honest, anyone wearing sunglasses from where I am from, has notions.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,702 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Musefan wrote: »
    My memory is of older siblings being able to purchase property at age 23/34 with one income.

    Took me a good 8 years more than that when it was my turn.

    yeah same here, a sibling bought a 1 bed apartment for 85k at 23 years of age on just a single income, by the time I hit 23 the Tiger had well took off and that same property was 170k
    John_Rambo wrote: »
    Some amazing stories on this thread, some really sad ones and some funny ones too.

    I'm really going to have to stop perching my sunglasses on my head.

    Its not just the sunglasses perched on your head, its when you match that with a pink Ralph Lauren shirt that the real problems begin. From there its a slippery slope to complaining about the lack of good helicopter pilots to fly you around to buy new sunglasses and more pink Ralph Lauren shirts.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,964 ✭✭✭John_Rambo


    To be honest, anyone wearing sunglasses from where I am from, has notions.

    That's mad. Where I'm from anyone that wears sunglasses is in the sun. Surely you have a pair in the car? I often see people with their hands hovering above their screwed up faces breathing through their mouths trying to block the sun. A reasonably priced pair of good sunglasses could save their dignity.
    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Its not just the sunglasses perched on your head, its when you match that with a pink Ralph Lauren shirt that the real problems begin. From there its a slippery slope to complaining about the lack of good helicopter pilots to fly you around to buy new sunglasses and more pink Ralph Lauren shirts.

    Pastel coloured faux rugby jerseys, extra belly space, collars popped, nice pleated chinos and a pair of dubarries. :) Sounds like my ex boss in his "Saturday" clothes.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 514 ✭✭✭thomasdylan


    It's not that hard. I'll be able to do that in about a year and I'll be 25.

    It can't be fairly hard if you're not living at home and starting your career. Particularly if you have college loans to repay.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,087 ✭✭✭✭FixdePitchmark


    John_Rambo wrote: »
    That's mad. Where I'm from anyone that wears sunglasses is in the sun. Surely you have a pair in the car? I often see people with their hands hovering above their screwed up faces breathing through their mouths trying to block the sun. A reasonably priced pair of good sunglasses could save their dignity.

    Wrinkles, screwed up faces , lack of comfort is what keeps you in your place.

    When you get to the place that you have a Pink Shirt and a pair of sunglasses on your head - you are at the moment of maximum Irish Poncey modern man.

    Irish pubs don't have windows for a reason - then these lads walk in with sandals and sunglasses on their head - clown alert.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,964 ✭✭✭John_Rambo


    Wrinkles, screwed up faces , lack of comfort is what keeps you in your place.

    When you get to the place that you have a Pink Shirt and a pair of sunglasses on your head - you are at the moment of maximum Irish Poncey modern man.

    Irish pubs don't have windows for a reason - then these lads walk in with sandals and sunglasses on their head - clown alert.

    OK FixdePitchmark. I don't have a pink shirt, but I do own sunglasses, I wear them in the sun, not in dark pubs. I've a few pairs of them actually. I guess, in your opinion I'm half a "ponce" or maybe my multiple ownership makes me a full on ponce.

    Leaving your obsession with other peoples ocular attire aside... any interesting stories from the Celtic Tiger?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,855 ✭✭✭Cake Man


    Would have been in secondary school during those years so can’t say I experienced or noticed much of what was going on at the time. I do recall around the summer of 04 or 05 a friend getting some summer work on a building site and making E600 a week doing a bit of labouring (he told us he basically spent the day sweeping up and general tidying. When bath tubs were installed he’d have a kip for a few hours in them when it was quiet.) The rest of us fools in part time supermarket jobs on near minimum wage.

    For anyone who lives in or around Waterford will know the Waterford Crystal factory was an institution for years and was booming around the CT years. I think at the height of it the place employed over 2000 people, crazy when you think the factory is shut now. You’d have bus loads of Yanks in every week doing tours and then buying up everything.
    If you’re from the area you’re either related to or know someone who worked in “The Glass” (or work(ed) there yourself). I remember being told a story recently from someone who worked there around the boom years a Chinese group of tourists came in on a tour of the place one day. They spot a lovely crafted giant glass panda in one of the showrooms and ask the tour guide “how much is that?”. Tour guide basically says it’s just for decoration and not really for sale, “yeah but how much?” is their reply. Not knowing what to do the tour guide escalated up to management and likewise, the management guys don’t really know either as it’s not something that was advertised for sale. So they do some calculations to work out the material cost, labour, overheads, profit etc to get an idea of what the glass panda would be worth and arrive at the figure of around E50,000. They go back down to the Chinese group and quote them the figure, not really sure if they were actually seriously considering buying it. Their reply: “ah ok, we’ll take three of them so”...

    I know in the above it wasn’t Irish people throwing money around but it showed the money coming in which ultimately flowed outwards into properties, big cars, holidays etc.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,702 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    John_Rambo wrote: »
    Pastel coloured faux rugby jerseys, extra belly space, collars popped, nice pleated chinos and a pair of dubarries. :) Sounds like my ex boss in his "Saturday" clothes.

    Lol that wear describes the Tiger man so much. I remember one of those specimens skipping an airport check in queue in Faro airport by ducking under several of those barriers to get to the top.

    The arrogance was truly astonishing. Most people in the queue were Irish so it was like some kind of group curtain twitching, everyone saying look at yer man in the pink shirt. He actually got away with it too, no one said a peep and he checked in quicker that the entire queue. Then it was down to the cattle holding pens and everyone is giving him and his wife dirty looks :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 275 ✭✭fAzI


    Bag of weed was for 50€ same as now :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 858 ✭✭✭Plasandrunt


    In Summer 2007 I'd just finished my first year of college and got a 5k loan off AIB to head off Interrailing for 2 months with repayments to begin at the end of the summer despite the fact I was leaving my part time job in Dunnes. Came back and flunked out of college, didn't get a job until December of that year and I hadn't had any correspondence from AIB at all but started to pay back the loan.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭Fuascailteoir


    Alan shearer was involved with some developers in planning for the development of holiday homes in a gated estate in ballyconnell. I remember seeing the brochure for it and Alan was selling the image of leaving your house and onto a luxury boat. The site work was all done and then came the crash.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,747 ✭✭✭MyPeopleDrankTheSoup


    Also, know an elderly single man in Clare who sold a piece of land for €6 million. The same man could easily live on €200 a week. He was laughing at it, joking his home village was like Manhattan. Of course the land, which actually flooded at times, was never built on.

    JJ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 229 ✭✭WAW


    mariaalice wrote: »
    I had an SSIA, but other than that no financial institution ever offered me loans or or credit cards that I can remember, so again maybe it was only certain sections of society it was offered too?

    SSIAs will they ever bring anything like them back?! Or the great interest rates on state savings? They were great.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,973 ✭✭✭mikemac2


    Section 50 - tax breaks to get investors to build student campus accommodation. Good idea

    Living over the shop scheme - invest to create accomadation in town centres. Good idea

    Section 23 - build housing estates in rural villages with no jobs, no transport, not much in the way of services at all. Absolutely horrendous idea! Many of these estates were never sold and more were left unfinished to die a slow death through vandalism. There is an estate in our village, nobody ever spent a night there. I fully expect it to be torched and burn down some time. Local teenagers use it for drinking their naggins at the moment


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,162 ✭✭✭Mister Vain


    Sky King wrote: »
    I did my leaving in early naughties - a load of my friends were working on the buildings from the late 90s all the way through the 'tiger'.

    My abiding memory is them earning huge money and spending thousands of euro a month on drinking and boy racer cars.

    Can I have 6 double vodka red bulls barman. Here's a hundred quid. Keep the change.
    Ahh yes, something you never see anymore is the modified cars. They were everywhere at one stage. Guys spending a fortune on sound systems and ridiculously loud exhausts.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 73,513 ✭✭✭✭colm_mcm


    There was a housing estate (Alderwood) in D15 where they gave you a “free” Volvo C30 with every house.

    Prices starred at €480k.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    chops018 wrote: »
    Does anyone have any good (or bad) stories from the Celtic Tiger years?

    You always hear phrases about how people partied etc., was there just a constant flow of credit available to people and people actually taking the money e.g. was there actually teachers on circa €30k a year buying a house and car and an apartment somewhere.

    I was in school and college during these years, graduated into the recession, so I didn't really see what was fully going on at the time bar the fact everyone was working and had money. My dad was working on the buildings on great money and my mam was working away also, we were never stuck really money-wise, also rent seemed to be a lot cheaper back then and fuel and also my college fees were only around €800 a year along with wages being fairly similar to what they are now (from what I can remember anyway, will stand corrected if I am wrong).

    A €30k a year colleague went to the bank looking for a small mortgage. He lived in his family home and inherited it when his folks died. He wanted to swop from his mid terrace to the end of terrace across the road.

    The bank suggested he keep his house and rent it and they'd loan in full on the one across the road.

    He declined


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    I knew a girl who spend 300 quid on postcard.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,431 ✭✭✭Sky King


    Ahh yes, something you never see anymore is the modified cars. They were everywhere at one stage. Guys spending a fortune on sound systems and ridiculously loud exhausts.

    She Glanza lad. Quare quick.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,202 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Sky King wrote: »
    She Glanza lad. Quare quick.
    Translation ??

    :confused:


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  • Registered Users Posts: 235 ✭✭kkhornet


    Translation ??

    :confused:

    Is that a Toyota glanza old chap. It's very fast.


  • Registered Users Posts: 671 ✭✭✭addaword


    In most of Donegal we never saw much of the tiger. Maybe a lot of old car got replaced by newer cars, but nothing wild .


  • Posts: 7,712 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    colm_mcm wrote: »
    There was a housing estate (Alderwood) in D15 where they gave you a “free” Volvo C30 with every house.

    Prices starred at €480k.

    Is that the one behind the Johnson Mooney and O'Brien factory where they were all lied to about them moving site?


  • Posts: 7,712 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    addaword wrote: »
    In most of Donegal we never saw much of the tiger. Maybe a lot of old car got replaced by newer cars, but nothing wild .

    99% of which had to have been untaxed 1.9TDI Audi A4’s with a RS4 body kit :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,431 ✭✭✭Sky King


    99% of which had to have been untaxed 1.9TDI Audi A4’s with a RS4 body kit :D

    Ah yes, 'Felt spec'.

    Still a few of them knocking around.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,954 ✭✭✭Sultan of Bling


    Cake Man wrote:
    For anyone who lives in or around Waterford will know the Waterford Crystal factory was an institution for years and was booming around the CT years. I think at the height of it the place employed over 2000 people, crazy when you think the factory is shut now. You’d have bus loads of Yanks in every week doing tours and then buying up everything. If you’re from the area you’re either related to or know someone who worked in “The Glass†(or work(ed) there yourself). I remember being told a story recently from someone who worked there around the boom years a Chinese group of tourists came in on a tour of the place one day. They spot a lovely crafted giant glass panda in one of the showrooms and ask the tour guide “how much is that?â€. Tour guide basically says it’s just for decoration and not really for sale, “yeah but how much?†is their reply. Not knowing what to do the tour guide escalated up to management and likewise, the management guys don’t really know either as it’s not something that was advertised for sale. So they do some calculations to work out the material cost, labour, overheads, profit etc to get an idea of what the glass panda would be worth and arrive at the figure of around E50,000. They go back down to the Chinese group and quote them the figure, not really sure if they were actually seriously considering buying it. Their reply: “ah ok, we’ll take three of them

    Hope you weren't doing a Chinese accent in your head typing that post.

    A certain leader of Fianna Fail got himself in trouble for the same thing 😜


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,828 ✭✭✭Sunny Disposition


    JJ?

    Not JJ, but he did okay too!


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,066 ✭✭✭HerrKuehn


    Anyone remember the developer Donal Caulfield?
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sunset-on-the-property-boom-1.941146

    "It's not so much about owning the jet. It's about having the money to give you the freedom to do what you want, to say what you want. The more money people have, the more free they are, if they have the right psyche. Having a jet means you're not queuing up for an hour in Dublin or London airports. Money is pure and utter freedom. If you want to wear shades inside, which I often do, I don't care what people say about me. My Da, Joseph, used to say that money was freedom. But he had five kids, he was a great goer, a great small builder, but he couldn't risk it because he had five kids."

    They had a brochure for one of their developments that cost €750.
    belmayne-3.jpg


  • Moderators, Regional Abroad Moderators Posts: 2,312 Mod ✭✭✭✭Nigel Fairservice


    I always remember this banking ad from those times. The banks more or less saying we don't care what you want the money for.



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,281 ✭✭✭CrankyHaus


    Ahh yes, something you never see anymore is the modified cars. They were everywhere at one stage. Guys spending a fortune on sound systems and ridiculously loud exhausts.

    At the time I thought it was tacky. I actually miss cars on the road being a little interesting now that everyone's crammed into blandly coloured new crossovers on PCP; barely a step above white goods in their individuality.


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