Dublin Opinion

As one who has been involved in the Irish property market for 40 years and has experienced every type of market scenario, I am totally convinced that the market is currently in good shape and that anyone buying now will do extremely well in the years ahead. There is no better investment than Irish property at present, and I believe that I will be proved right in this conviction.

Why do we allow scaremongers and doomsayers with unfounded pessimism and unbridled negativity dictate our thinking and blunt consumer confidence? The Irish economy is the envy of the world. Job creation is phenomenal with more than 7,000 new jobs being created each month - despite the gloomy attention given to periodic job losses in some sectors.

So wrote Ken MacDonald, MD of Hooke & MacDonald, in an article for the Irish Independent in March 2007.

He went on:

Politicians won’t face up to the root cause of rising rents and rising prices, namely the shortage of supply caused by an inefficient and anti-development planning system.

This is by far the single most pressing issue in the Irish property market and needs to be tackled immediately if we are to avoid any future periods of rapidly rising prices that will make it even more difficult for young people and families to buy their first home. Instead they come up with populist theories such as land hoarding by developers which clearly does not exist.

And concluded:

Unemployment stands at 4.1 per cent, the lowest in Europe; there are 750,000 more people in the workplace than a decade ago. We have revitalised cities and towns, a conveyor belt of entrepreneurial business people operating successfully on a world stage, a rich cultural and artistic heritage, a vibrant talented young population, rising by almost 100,000 per year, confident in their own and their country’s destiny. We should be celebrating our success on a daily basis. In any event, the Irish love affair with property will continue undaunted despite the knockers.

Not the first time an Irish tit has criticized a bunch of knockers, but there you go.

There is no better investment than Irish property at present, and I believe that I will be proved right in this conviction.

And all of this passed off as informed, expert opinion and analysis by the national press a sweet three years ago.

Please keep this in mind when you are reading the Irish Independent and Irish Times today, and the thick-as-shit solutions they peddle with the same certainty as their 2007 everlasting property paradise.