Letters to the Editor: Lending institutions must be very cautious

There are factors in that market that have undertones of the housing bubble of the early 2000s that caused the last property market crash, says reader Paul Fellows.

Would I be on my own in believing that our banks need to be exercising very cautious risk management on home loan lending in the current unstable housing market?

There are factors in that market that have undertones of the housing bubble of the early 2000s that caused the last property market crash.

Estate agents are now talking about “bids” on properties — not even “offers”. Should a prudent bank lend against a fair market price advertised by agents or against inflated price promoted by “bids”?

It seems common for prices to be 15% over fair value and in some instances a truly risky 30%. 

Add into that the economic outlook: Stock markets are nervous about US price inflation and potential increasing interest rates; the Group of Seven are close to an accord on the corporate taxation of multinationals which has significant implications for our economic growth; there is a forecast that Irish unemployment rates could top 16.1% — higher than the last recession.

Additionally it is being said that personal tax rates will have to increase significantly to repay government pandemic borrowing.

It’s a volatile outlook.

I understand supply and demand. I also understand that uncontrolled house price inflation benefits neither seller nor buyer. The laissez-faire approach of lending institutions in the last bubble inevitably led to bailouts and price crashes. It is to be hoped that the risk committees of every bank and the Central Bank are eyeing what is beginning to happen to house price inflation with great concern and caution.

It makes sense to lend a percentage against “fair market value” but it makes no sense to lend against prices inflated by an artificial and opaque “bidding” process.

Time, in everyone’s interest, for lending institutions to be very cautious.

Paul Fellows

Bailick Rd

Midleton

O’Leary’s hot air when given airtime

Michael O’Leary, when interviewed on the matter of the Ryanair flight diverted to Belarus, commended the flight crew.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary.

What did the flight crew do to deserve commendation?

They followed directions to land the aircraft and later to take off.

Michael O’Leary, in my opinion, is given lots of air time to spout his BS.

Michael A Moriarty

Rochestown

Cork

Israel abuses its unfair advantage

Much political and media commentary on the latest war between Israel and the Palestinian people suggests the existence of an equivalency, both militarily and morally, between the two sides. Considering that the Palestinians have no standing army, no military fighter jets, no navy, no tanks, or artillery, etc, then such suggestions are, of course, bunkum.

A more egregious related claim by Israeli spokespersons and their allies in the West, often merely repeated without question by the mainstream media here, is that Israel uses warnings and precision strikes to target only Palestinian militants, and not civilians when they attack residential buildings.

Mofeed Sabit, 64, sits on a couch along a road covered in debris, from an airstrike that destroyed a building prior to a ceasefire.

One would expect this given that Israel has one of the most sophisticated surveillance technologies of any world military and holds a registry of all Palestinian citizens, including all new births. They have also much of the urban fabric of Gaza digitally modelled and they can not only predict how many rooms in an apartment, but often who exactly is sleeping in which room.

So how then can this same so-called moral military justify its attack on May 11 that destroyed two residential buildings belonging to the Abu al-Ouf and al-Kolaq families, killing 30 people — 11 of them children.

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On May 14, they attacked the al-Atar family’s three-storey building killing a mother and three children. The home of Nader Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Thom, where he lived with eight others, was attacked without warning on May 15. And then there is the case of the respected surgeon and head of Internal Medicine at the Al Shifa Hospital, Dr Ayman Abu Al-Ouf, who was killed in his home by an early-morning missile attack on Sunday, May 17, along with two of his teenage children, his parents, and his colleague, Dr Mooein Ahmad al-Aloul, a 66-year-old psychiatric neurologist. This has all been reported by Amnesty International.

The Israeli military’s purposeful targeting of whole families is not a mistake, as Israeli journalist Amira Hass has observed. Israel had well-practiced this strategy in the 2014 war. Are Palestinians supposed to take some consolation that only 15 families were part or wholly obliterated this time around? Israel also damaged 17 hospitals and/or clinics as well as the main Covid-19 testing centre; demolished a media building for international journalists; destroyed sewage and water infrastructure; attacked multiple schools, and bombed the roads leading to Al Shifa hospital.

Any attempt to draw a moral equivalency between makeshift Hamas rockets fired in the general direction of Israeli cities and the Israeli military targeted destruction of whole families and critical infrastructure in Gaza is not only bunkum — it’s an outright
obscenity.

Jim Roche

PRO, Irish Anti-War Movement

Dublin 1

Coveney’s criticism of Security Council

Simon Coveney, Minister for Foreign Affairs, was very critical of the UN Security Council, and its failure to act in relation to Gaza. That’s interesting — considering Ireland currently sits on the Security Council?

Michael A Moriarty

Rochestown

Cork

Gross unfairness of ability to pay LPT

The ability to pay the Local Property Tax (LPT) is grossly unfair.

As an OAP on a reduced entitlement, and with my partner who is in the same category, there is not a fair solution to paying or deferring the LPT.

instead, we are burdened with a penalty if we defer. It is just not right that we have to pay the same rate as many people in our area who have two, and sometimes more, incomes than us.

Frank Dillon

Athlone

FF and FG lack grip on housing crisis

Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael are responsible for the housing crisis in Ireland; they never got to grips with it.

That is why they are so low in the polls and if it was not for the pandemic there would be hundreds of thousands on the streets protesting against this Government and the rising costs of buying a home

Housing is a life and death issue; 79 homeless people died in Dublin alone last year.

Noel Harrington

Kinsale

Co Cork

Downgrading teaching of history

The Teaching Council of Ireland requires that Irish history comprise a quarter of history modules taken in the university study of history in second and third year by aspirant teachers at second level. But new requirements which take effect from 1 January 1, 2023, ask only that “the degree must include the specific study of Irish history”. This is vague to the point of meaninglessness. To allow the teaching of history by those with virtually no accredited knowledge of Irish history is to downgrade the latter. It should not be necessary to point out that citizens of the State should know the narratives of the peoples who lived on this island. The regulation should be revisited as a matter of urgency.

Micheál Ó Siochrú

History Department

Trinity College Dublin

Cease restrictions and end the fear

With the sheer amount of time that’s gone by since Ireland’s restrictions began, the amount and intensity of fear-mongering and all of the fear that goes with it, I’m calling for an end to this fear. It’s not a fear that helps anyone, if it ever did.

Instead of worrying so much about all of this, I not only call for an end to this specific fear, but to all of these restrictions. They’ve all gone on more than long enough and it is far past time for them to end. Let individuals decide to take their own risks, without legal or financial repercussions.

Let them wear masks in shops, etc, if they choose to. There’s always risks, there’s always illness and there’s always death, but we don’t have to let fear rule our lives.

It’s high time to truly live again.

Robbie Rowe

Wexford

Doctor’s refusal to give patient HRT

I am just back from a consultation with my doctor about starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the treatment was refused to me.

I am so disappointed. What are women to do, when in the throes of perimenopause, their own doctor will not give them HRT? Struggle through the next few years in a fog of anxiety and depression.

I just feel if this was a male issue men would get what they required.

Mel Costa

Galway