Simmering anger

Here read. Interesting.

https://www.housingeurope.eu/resource-1673/was-it-more-affordable-for-our-parents-to-buy-a-home-than-it-is-for-today-s-generation

I do know if I remember correctly there wasnt this I could never afford a house theme that is going on now.

If ya done your sums right and were prudent enough. Yad get somewhere.

Even on your lonesome salary.

The thing that worrys me the most is the youth leaving in droves. Fook the economy doing well if it's the next generation is no better off from it all.

A country hollowing from its center wont do it any good in the long run.

A disaster in the making.

I see posters talking about how young people can to waste money on phones, holidays etc - there's no comparison. We are drowning in cheap mass-produced goods from China, stuff that was far more expensive in the past. I remember people living in flats who rented TVs and video recorders in the early '90s. Ditto with cheap airfares, it used to cost £250 or so - a week's wages - to fly return to London, it'd be like paying €700 today. Food was also a lot more expensive. What's become unaffordable is the basic necessities of life like housing and medical care. I experienced firsthand how for example, maternity services deteriorated due to overcrowding in the space of a decade or so, even as the country had got richer on paper. Same with school places; I remember when your child would just go to the local school, now they're bursting at the seams and you might have to travel 20 miles to get a place. Like a previous poster, I couldn't get help for a painful medical condition for one of my children and had to pay several thousand to go private as the alternative was waiting several years.

There's also just a weariness about the state of the place in general. You hear this nonsense about our high GDP but if you walk through one of our main train stations like Connolly, it's so unbelievably grotty and shabby and poor-looking. More Irish people have travelled now, and can see what a rubbish deal we're getting for our supposed wealth and the tax we pay compared to other countries. We've been promised a rail link from the airport for decades. I drive a road in my locality which has potholes the size of craters. The council street-cleaning has been cut so there's a layer of grime on the pavement that's been there since the winter. I can honestly say the place looked better in the 1980s, which shocks me, as where is all this tax money going? Not back to us, that's for sure.

I think a better way of looking at it is that a chunk of it is my money because I have a mortgage with AIB and when DJ Carey doesn't pay back his loans, everyone else (including me) who has a mortgage with AIB has to pay his loans. It's not the taxpayer who pays, it's the AIB customers.

The state owned AIB and still owns a majority chunk of it. Therefore the tax payer continues to pay for banking mistakes.

The only argument that could be made for taxpayers continuing to pay for banking mistakes is from the original bailout back in 2008. Taxpayers are probably still paying back interest on the loans taken out for that bailout.

You are.

Pubs and restaurants packed? Nah , not like back in the day at all. I remember when pubs were really heaving.

I moved back a while ago and the health service is shite, expensive and inaccessible, public transportation dire in places, school places extremely lacking, no guards to be seen almost anywhere, hotel costs insane and general cost of living has rocketed (almost everything except groceries are expensive and getting more so). My electricity and gas and fuel costs are at least 2x where I used to live. Car Insurance 5x-10x. Medical insurance roughly same but out of pcket costs in Ireland huge. My rent 3x. Need to pay for prescription drugs. Buying a house cheaper than where I lived but going up 10% a year. Many activities are scarce or expensively due to insurance costs. I used to pay 10% plus tax now it approx 40%. VAT is often 23% here whereas at most I paid 5% sales tax before. On top of that my salary is lower although I accept some people would move to Ireland and get a higher salary from poor countries. 33% tax on capital gains, 40% on deemed disposal ETFs. Crazy stuff.

Ireland is being run really badly and is OVERSTRETCHED. You can see it much more clearly if you haven't always lived in the fishbowl. The government is the main reason, taking well over 50% of all earnings with their various taxes.

There's basically no financial reasons for me to live in Ireland whatsoever.

You hear this nonsense about our high GDP but if you walk through one of our main train stations like Connolly, it's so unbelievably grotty and shabby and poor-looking. More Irish people have travelled now, and can see what a rubbish deal we're getting for our supposed wealth and the tax we pay compared to other countries. We've been promised a rail link from the airport for decades.

Yup I was also shocked at the state of Connolly. It looks like a 3rd rate old station at the end of a grotty street. To get to the dart there's only one entrance , go up the dirty escalators in the open, then through the single entrance , then a long winding route past the trains to get to the dart platforms. There should be about five entrances into the place and direct from street level not thru the train station. So antiquated. And this is one of the country's main transport hubs lol. WTF are they doing with all the money?

Yep and many of us Dubliners my age got saddled with 500k mortgages for a duplex is feckin Duleek or somewhere

Defined benefit or defined contribution ?

Defined contribution of the size provided by the tax payer to AIB management for a job tragically badly done are the stuff of dark fairy tales.