If we could turn debt into land, we’d own Wales

THE huge scale of the monies involved in the Irish bank bailout are hard to comprehend, the numbers being so very large as to be well outside normal human experience.

But it occurs to me that the scale of the thing can perhaps be made more apparent to the mind of the ordinary citizen by converting the monies into acres of land.

Last year, the average cost of agricultural land in Ireland was €9,678 per acre. Now, there are 640 acres in a square mile. Co Dublin – let’s use it as a unit of measure – is 356 square miles (921 sq km) in area.

So, for example, the €17bn worth of property speculation loans due to be transferred from Anglo-Irish Bank to NAMA (the debts of 10 people) could buy 1,756,561 acres – that’s 2,745 square miles – of agricultural land, which is rather more than 7½ times the area of Co Dublin.

This may seem an unlikely amount of land until you remember that a billion is a thousand million. Estimates of the total cost of the bank bailout, part of which involves the NAMA project, seem to range between €50bn and €90bn.

Well, at €9,678 per acre, €50bn is enough to buy all of Wales (yes, really). In fact there’s still €312m left over in “loose change”.

With €90bn you could still buy Wales and then, with the €40.3 odd billions left, purchase each and every acre of land of all the following 11 counties: Louth, Carlow, Dublin, Longford, Monaghan, Leitrim, Kildare, Offaly, Wicklow, Kilkenny and Wexford.

Even then you would have €282m in cash left. Your readers may find it edifying to sharpen their pencils and, as our emphatic American cousins would say, “go figure” how many times over their own county (or indeed province) could be purchased for the huge amount of debt the Irish state is very rapidly amassing in order to avoid, or delay, the bankruptcies of a few corporations and individuals.

A table of the counties of Ireland, ranked by land area, can be found online in Wikipedia and is useful for such calculations.

Stan Reynolds

Toames

West

Macroom

Co Cork