- BLOG BEAG –

A significant fiscal milestone in the history of the State is about to be met. Although not directly related to the advertising industry, and this is a business blog, it is surely related to the economic advancement of the nation likely for this generation, and the next. It affects investment, jobs and state services. According to The Irish Times (18/2/10) the first wave of “asset” (our quotes) transfers to the State agency NAMA will be taking place imminently. More than €16 billion in loans linked to the country’s top ten developers are being moved to NAMA. This is out of a total of €80 billion to be transferred finally.

Let’s just look at the smallest of those numbers – the ten. To quote the Times again, they are Liam Carroll; Bernard McNamara; Sean Mulryan of Ballymore; financier Derek Quinlan; Paddy McKillen, owner of the Jervis Street Shopping Centre; Treasury Holdings, which is owned by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett; Cork developer Michael O’Flynn; Joe O’Reilly, the developer behind the Dundrum Shopping Centre in Dublin; Dublin builder Gerry Gannon, co-owner of the K Club golf resort in Co Kildare; and Galway businessman Gerry Barrett, owner of Ashford Castle in Co Mayo and G Hotel in Galway.

The next number, the €16bn – just five characters to capture sixteen thousand million euro.

The question is simply posed. How were ten individuals  allowed to rack up 16,000,000,000 euro of loans without sufficient review, oversight or even context to the rest of the country’s economic activities?

To even begin to appreciate these figures with respect to our small nation’s total finances, some perspective has to be applied  (see the CSO for more).

• The total value of the 2009 primary and post-primary school building programme was only 614m.
• In 2008, the total value of Ireland’s agricultural output was 11.6bn
• In 2008, the total value of ALL food products manufactured AND sold in Ireland was 16.9bn.
• Finally, if you tot up all the wages and salaries for everyone who worked in the entire Irish service sector for one year 2007, it comes to 23bn.

Hard to get away from another word, this time with six characters, hubris.