Docklands debacle puts us in a state of terror
He was appointed to the board of Aer Lingus by the Government in March 2004 and served as the senior independent director of the airline until his abrupt departure from that board in December 2008.
This culture of excess and extravagance was also abundantly evident when DDDA became a party to the acquisition of the site of the former Dublin city dump at Ringsend for €412 million in August 2006.
The professional valuations of this property – prior to this transaction – were apparently in the €250-€375m range.
Sixty percent of the 25-acre site was to have been developed for residential units, a substantial proportion of which were to have been one-bedroom apartments seemingly intended to sell for €500,000 each.
An income of €150,000 per annum would have been necessary to afford an apartment at this price, but fewer than 15,000 of the 483,636 taxpayers who claimed mortgage interest tax relief in 2006 earned €150,000 or more.
The median income of Irish mortgage-holders in 2006 was less than €50,000 per annum.
The recognised indicator of housing affordability is that median property prices should not exceed three-to-four times the median income level of the owner-occupier, or that mortgage repayments should not be greater than 30% of family income. This would imply the maximum price that typical buyers could afford and sustain in 2006 would have been be closer to €200,000, notwithstanding that the vacant housing stock in Dublin city that year was more than 26,000 units, according to the 2006 census.
Who benefited from the extortionate price paid for this site and what advice did the minister obtain from the board to warrant the DDDA being a party to such an outrageously overpriced transaction?
The sooner Environment Minister John Gormley publishes the two reports into the governance of the DDDA, the better.
The public have a right to understand why the state became a party to a transaction to provide homes for the super-rich; why this culture of self-indulgent excess and wanton, imperious extravagance was tolerated and if the ethical standards of their political appointees to this board were met to the satisfaction of the Government.
The consequences of these feckless decisions is the waging of economic terrorism for many years to come on every citizen who must bear the huge additional costs relating to NAMA, higher mortgage interest rates to compensate for the cost of banks borrowing huge sums on international money markets greatly in excess of their customer deposits, as well as additional banking costs, fees and other onerous burdens.
Myles Duffy
Bellevue Avenue
Glenageary
Co Dublin
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