Paddy's Weak

Bank Holiday’s are great if you’ve a job, you really appreciate the time off, for me it’s a time to catch up on filing, fiddling with bills, wondering why the phone isn’t working, did I forget to pay? While the rest of the country is still recovering from its immersion in green pints, it’s just another day for taking stock. Paddy’s Day has been Paddy’s Week for a long time. And quite frankly, I’ve discovered Paddy’s very WEAK too.

Great Cheerleader just to grab your attention!

My neighbour Lara, whose husband is in Sydney for over a year due to their being no work here for him, invites me to join her and her children for lamb roast and I am mighty appreciative. While she is studying computer science in the hope of getting an IT job and is often distraught with its incomprehensibility, she thinks my taking in lodgers would be harder to cope with. I’m getting used to it I tell her, with endless time spent on job applications and re-writing my book, I’m lucky to have good men in the house. When her children have left the table, we wonder where our lives went; her husband and I were both in businesses related to the construction industry. Our work went into a NAMA graveyard and the only jobs on offer were to the ex-bankers and estate agents who lent money and estimated ridiculous values to create the bubble.

I am especially relieved with my current lodgers, after the Latvian experience, better to stick with what you know if you have to share your house. Here’s a thing, when Kovac left here he put a sheaf of papers into the wrong bin, while transferring them to the green bin I noticed they were applications for Child Benefit. That’s strange I thought, he’s only in the country three weeks and he’s applying to have 200 euro per month sent to his child in Latvia. It seems he was put right on to it before he arrived.

On Tuesday a brown envelope with a harp arrives and, unusually, I open it, as it could be a VAT refund from last year for 20 euro or something. A booklet falls out, LPT. Oh, no, I put it right back and when cost centre #1 joins me for breakfast I ask him to read it and figure out what it will cost.

‘It doesn’t give you a figure,’ he says, ‘you have to go on the website and work it out yourself.’

‘Please do it for me,’ I ask, not wanting to waste any writing time on Property Tax investigation.

There’s quite a disparity in sale prices around here, from 500k to 72k we discover, down from 1million at the height of the boom. I can’t believe the 72k, must have been one of those bank auctions. How unfair on the owner to endure that slap. Anyway, we reckon the tax could be as much as 700 euro per year.

‘Well if I have to find 700 euro to pay that, I’d have to earn at least 1,000 euro,’ I say to the finance student.

‘Then by the time Revenue gets it, they will use up 350 on Admin, PR, Booklet design and print, Ads, Marketing Agencies, Pension, oh, overtime, days off, you know – at least 350 euro.’

As the inheritors of all the Anglo and sundry developer debt write-off, my two student sons need to take heed of what they’ll be stuck with.

As CC#1 butters his toast and reverts to texting all and sundry, I do a quick calculation, ‘That means it will take the property tax of six houses in this cul-de-sac to meet the annual child benefit to one 5-year old in Latvia, where they will be getting their own benefit anyway, and that's just one child living abroad. Worst of all, none of the money will be spent on Irish milk, bread, school uniforms, shoes, or even a night out with the missus. And Kovac won’t be paying property tax, car tax, VAT, water charges, bin charges, or….

Oh Dear, Why are the Paddy’s in Leinster House so weak? Do they not see what they are doing to Irish families, breaking them up and burdening them with untenable taxes, turning people out of their homes, while not providing any chance of employment?

It’s all very well having a matey pint with Christine Lagarde in Doheny’s, but Joan Burton and Michael Noonan need to take a look at what the IMF and ECB are really doing to this country; getting gold stars for your homework isn’t filtering down to the hardworking, educated masses, it’s breaking up families and breaking down people.