Who would pay if we all left Ireland, asks ISABEL MORTON

ON THE EVE of a general election few are talking of buying or selling property, but are desperately trying to hang on to what they’ve got.

Regardless of individual politics, it’s all about the survival of our jobs, homes, lives and our little nation.

Three issues that dominated the last week of the campaign were: the Government’s promise to protect bank bondholders (made on our behalf but without our permission), renegotiating the exorbitant interest rate on ECB borrowings and restructuring of loans to help distressed mortgage holders.

Unless these problems are sorted out immediately, there will be no country left to govern, as Ireland is perilously close to imploding.

The other day, when discussing the estimated 1,000 people leaving Ireland each week in search of work and a better life elsewhere, my husband (who is prone to the odd notion or two), speculated over what might happen if we all emigrated.

Who then, he asked, would be responsible for the Irish bank debt? Europe would be forced to write it off and forget about it. Indeed, many suspect they’ve already done just that.

Taking a more practical approach to the same issue, David McWilliams recently said that, where our sovereign debt was our responsibility, it was at least, of manageable proportions. Bank debt was not and he recommended that we should let the people decide. We can guess at the outcome of that referendum. It would probably generate the highest turnout of voters ever registered in any election or referendum in this state.

We have become the laughing stock of the financial world for protecting bank bond-holders, and now the world is standing back to watch with fascination, to see how we might extricate ourselves.

This sad fact was confirmed when, a few weeks ago, one of my sisters gave me the March issue of Vanity Fairmagazine. Handing it over, she ominously suggested that I ignore the glamorous bits about Hollywood and the Oscars, which adorned the glossy front cover, and concentrate on an article by Michael Lewis called When Irish Eyes Are Crying. It is a chillingly accurate assessment of our sad situation. It tells a tragic story of utter incompetence and "cute hoorism", combined with an almost pathetic and childish naivety. It made embarrassing reading.

It didn't take long before one small item in that Vanity Fairarticle become the talk of the town; the fact that a Merrill Lynch bond trader, having tried unsuccessfully on September 29th 2008 to offload his Irish bank bonds, was fully prepared to take a 50 per cent hit on his investment.

So when he woke up the next day he couldn’t believe his luck when he found that the Irish government had guaranteed their full value.

He was one of many bondholders worldwide who took a punt on Irish banks and lost the gamble, yet was unexpectedly and unnecessarily repaid in full by the Irish taxpayer.

In order to do so, our Government compounded this mistake by going cap in hand to the ECB, where it agreed to pay exorbitant interest rates on funds borrowed.

In addition, we now have the ludicrous situation where about 40 per cent of people in this country (according to figures I strongly suspect are shy of the mark) are up to their eyeballs in debt and many more are struggling to survive due to the complete lack of credit. Increasing numbers are unable to extricate themselves from their financial mess because their main investment is in their homes, which are now in negative equity.

It is insane to presume that this disaster can be sorted out by bankrupt banks asking newly impoverished citizens, whose salaries have plummeted (if they’re lucky enough to have one at all), to pay mortgages which, with increasing interest rates, will be even more impossible to service and which they should probably not have got in the first place.

And, when they fail to do so, as they undoubtedly will, the lenders will repossess people’s homes, evict them and leave them for the state to support. This is beyond ludicrous and makes no logical, financial or moral sense.

Listening to RTÉ radio's Livelineprogramme last Monday, it appeared as if my husband's daft notion of us all emigrating and leaving behind a desolate country, stripped bare of its citizens, is rapidly becoming a reality.

Images of tumbledown thatched cottages and coffin ships were replaced with deserted housing estates and one-way Ryanair flights, as the airwaves quivered with the angry voices of those being forced to leave Ireland and the abject sadness of those left behind.

And still, our politicians’ mantra for “change” keeps ringing in our ears.

Isabel Morton is a property consultant