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

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

There have been some great threads a out Celtic Tiger stories.

Some real classics like a bloke going to cinema on his own buying 3 seats so he'd have free seats beside him.

Or my favourite was a lass who said his uncle gave him €50 to mind her counsins while the uncle went to the toilet.

Some people just don't know what to do with money except spend it right now.

That'll be coming back soon when cinema's reopen..

I lived it up.. I was out 4/5 nights a week consistently, making decent cash through work plus another avenue . Be it pub, cinema, cinema and pints, gig and pints whatever I was having a good time although burning the candle at both ends a bit.. I was driving a nice car, two foreign holidays a year, interspersed with weekends away for football in Manchester, London to see a band, Kilkenny for the Roots festival.

I just enjoyed myself. Nothing really that involved ‘excess’ per say just being able to enjoy life, and I did for sure.

In the intervening years I’ve been curtailed a little by a medical issue but that’s thankfully 90% sorted and rehabilitation successful with 100% the aim...

Hopefully that ‘might’ tie in with covid being and having less of a chokehold on us all and a normal life again.

I found out what a Tracker Mortgage was and I still have it

Knew a property developer who can barely drive a car but he bought a helicopter and tried to learn to fly it. He lost it along with a lot else when the economy turned.
The competition among some of the builders on this side of the country was pretty stupid and quite funny if you didn't buy into it. We'd have conventions and social events and things like that and the big talk was hilarious.
If one started a project building 120 houses everyone else would want to build 130. Fellas bought new cars and rivals would respond with helicopters. Holidays were an odd one, everyone wanted to go somewhere exotic but you didn't want to give the impression your company could do without you for any length. In the summers a lot of them were going for dinner and pints at a certain exclusive golf club every night but then others started going to London and Berline for weekends and doing cocaine.
Unsurprisingly the more competitive and less intelligent guys did lose their very fleeting wealth. Lot of bad health and very hard lessons learned.
I got out of construction altogether for a spell shortly before the top of the market, best move I made, but for a fella with a bit of experience of earlier booms it was fairly clear it was going to end in tears. The problem was Ireland didn't have the history that the UK would have had. I don't think the country as a whole would be caught as badly again, there is a folk memory of boom/bust now.

I used to put wads of cash in my shoes to give me an extra 2 inches in height.

whisky_galore wrote: »

Shopping trips to New York was another one.

As was holiday homes in Bulgaria

I worked for a substantial developer during the Celtic Tiger years; I didn't see any helicopters but there was a lot high living for sure- nice cars, fancy holidays, holiday homes and the rest. It didn't end well for anyone (I was made redundant before the whole thing folded- a blessing in disguise) and a lot of people were stung in the finish. I was a mere employee but I knew it could never last. I didn't enjoy the whole crass consumption that went on during the boom and was relieved when it ended. I thought we'd learned a lesson or two but wasn't so sure when things had started to ratchet up again in the past 2 years or so..except this time no one could have forseen Covid 19. Hopefully the country can recover economically but I never want to see a building boom like that again- it's so destructive and ultimately end in a lot of pain- just like a bad hangover after a "great" night out.

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.
Pubs were always packed, the country definitely had a major drink problem. Went to my physio lately, a French guy here about 20 years. He said that one time people would frequently tell him about drinking double figures of pints the night before. Not being used to the Ireland of the time he was stunned at the alcohol culture, but he says he never hears that sort of thing now.
When I look back at the boom and bust it really shows the value of common sense. So called ‘experts’ were telling us the boom was sustainable, but many ordinary people knew better.
Because of the years I spent abroad I knew what a property crash was like and that it could happen despite predictions it wouldn’t, but there were a certain amount of people who simply did not believe that house prices possibly could decline. It was a hard lesson.
It has changed politics here, FF and FG combined don’t do much better than FF alone was doing during the Tiger years.

Yeah I had a great time of it but I stayed well away from the ridiculousness. Was making money, was plenty of work but never went above my station whatsoever. Was offered all the crazy bribes by the banks but kept well away. Knew it was a bag of trouble. But apart from that had a great time. Loads of gigs, bought loads of books and records that I still have and treasure. The wallop didn't really affect me only all the grimness elsewhere that came with it so I just stopped watching television.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »

The story went that their wives were going to Rome for the weekend, so the two lads drove them to the airport and when they had left, on a whim the lads booked themselves onto the next flight to wherever for a weekend on the piss without telling the women.

So they went to Frankfurt - possibly the most boring city in Europe (after Luxembourg)?

The payouts from the SSIA scheme matured around 2005/2006. It was the second stage of a credit fueled rocket kicking in for many. Equity releases, thousands received from a government top up saving scheme, 100% plus mortgages, loan offers from credit unions, preapproved credit cards, unsecured bank loan offers. All Hat, no cattle. How did it all go wrong?

Its easy to forget a thing like this, but because of the downturn we were able to buy a house in a very nice area in other words an expensive and sought aftre area for a great price, so some did very well out of the down turn.

Sean Quinns daughters wedding cost 1 million euro.