Dublin Opinion

A five year study recently published by The International Brain Institute in Paris, France, has shown that the property market has caused Ireland to - quite literally - shit its brain out of its own arsehole, leaving the nation aimless, directionless, and blind.

The project director, Dr. Rocco Siffredi, told Dublin Opinion last night that the Irish malaise was quite unique in Europe. ‘It is not a problem in mainland Europe,’ he said. ‘At first we looked to Irish history. This is because in our first round of interviews nearly everyone mentioned the British and the land war as somehow leaving a collective desire to own land.

In fact, we had people tell us that the Irish obsession with property can be traced back to the famine and the fear of eviction.’

Dr. Siffredi told me that when his team correlated the eviction thesis with the European experience of serfdom, famine, war, and genocide, “it began to leak.” “Europe,” he said, “went through hell, particularly from 1914 to 1945, but yet finds no comfort in mortgages that are thirteen times the average annual wage. It certainly finds no comfort in sub-standard housing that costs on average €400,000. ”

“Prior to 1914,” he said, “there was in Europe as much a history of serfdom and eviction as anything in the Irish experience, particularly Eastern Europe. In fact, Irish land reform was decades ahead of the rest of the world, beginning as it did in the late nineteenth century. To this day it is still more advanced than in Great Britain.”

“Historical precedent, we find, is usually a ruse for contemporary attitudes and abuses. The Irish experience made us look, not deeper into history, but sideways, into Irish society itself.”

“What we found was that in Ireland the problem is not the desire to own one’s home, but the fact that the property market is, for all intents and purposes, unregulated. The standards, checks, and balances are so weak and un-inforced that corruption is endemic. The problem lies with the regulators. They have allowed vested private interests to make billions. They’ve also had a free ride from the Irish media. Not surprising, given that your so-called liberal newspaper, the Irish Times, now owns the largest property website in Ireland, myhome.ie. And paid millions for the site as well.”

“Yet, the knowledge of all of this has not led the Irish people to elect legislators who will pass laws ensuring that houses at least have walls that don’t piss sound like a drunk on Dame Street. Instead, the Irish people have gone the other way. They are now convinced that “affordable housing” is on a par with paedophilia as a social ill.”

When a nation believes that affordable housing is a crime, that is when we know that it has shat its brain out of its asshole. From a marketing point of view, it is genius – especially as the only houses being built in Ireland these days to any long-term standards are these evil affordable houses. The rest are just cardboard.”