Ireland took a small step forward when it was revealed that the azure skies we see in housing ads are, in fact, produced artificially. This was both news, because it confirmed our suspicion that the property market is the most artful one we have ever encountered, and a public service, because with all the changes happening here, some of us had almost begun to hope the weather might be picking up too. A particularly dazzling sun shone over 16 new houses in the Dublin suburb of Carrickmines last weekend. In reality it was cold and damp, but in the housing brochure hardly a cloud dared to loom. Although wintry trees gave the game away against that dream horizon, it seemed not to matter. All but one of these £1 million houses had been sold before they went on view.
As I visited the new Carrickmines estate to see a house called the Yeats, the words of a woman to whom I once gave English grinds came back to me.
"What's wrong with trying to make a few honest bob?" she had asked. She didn't like Yeats's lines about those who
fumble in a greasy till
And add the half-pence to the pence . . . until
You have dried the marrow from the bone
The house called Yeats and 15 others in its £1 million price range were a place of pilgrimage. People entered the doors with a sense of wonder, fingering wooden struts on its American oak staircase as reverently as their parents might have touched Padre Pio's glove.
Some came from sheer curiosity, others hoping, perhaps, to sniff the odour of new Irishness lingering in its halls.
We toured bedrooms that were unremarkable except for the number of en-suite bathrooms they boasted. We saw kitchens made predictably of stainless steel. A quick trip round the back and you could tell what house and garden magazines the target market was thought to be reading.
"Did you bring your cheque book with you? I forgot mine," a young man joked. We pretended to laugh. It had a funny smell, this particular brand of new Irishness. Peculiar, rather than haha.
The siren sounded quite some time ago about the problems of Irish hearths and homes. Some 50,000 new households here in the last decade, house and building prices going though the roof. Rentals cost more than an average mortgage, homelessness figures have never been higher. Almost 50 per cent of properties now are acquired by people who already have at least one home.
If the property people themselves can be believed, prices will surge a further 20 per cent this year, putting houses and apartments even further from the reach of many people.[Q L]
When last week Dublin's four local authorities called for a new strategic response team to co-ordinate the whole shebang, it was certainly not before time.
Let me declare my vested interest in the property debate. I co-own a house, so every time the market rises, the value of my house does too. Grey skies for homeless people or those in rented accommodation mean blue skies for me. You could say I stand to gain from other people's bad weather. As do most commentators and decision-makers who are in a position to initiate change.
No one is responsible for the housing crisis, it seems. Not the developers, auctioneers or speculators, not the buyers and sellers, not Government, local authority, developers, or us journalists. Everyone is merely trying to make a few honest bob.
A mix of economic growth and demographic change kick-started the process, explained the Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal, Mr Molloy, recently.
That updated version of the trickle-down economic policies sponsored by Charles Haughey's governments in the 1980s may account for some contributing factors. But even after the two Bacon reports the problem is becoming worse - or better, depending on your vested interests. Builders, developers, speculators, advertisers and investors are making record profits.
Change must be redirected from the bottom up. That means regulating or capping the price of private sector housing, as well as introducing the measures recommended by the Dublin local authorities. New wealth is worth celebrating, but £1 million new houses remarkable more for their cost than their artistry are not.
For £1 million, a house might stand as a symbol that its owner had got somewhere, or as a signpost to certain Irish ambitions which might speak to us of worthwhile possible futures. Instead, the Yeats could have been anywhere. Or nowhere.
Anonymous architecture in a western imperialist style meant you could have been visiting middle America or a compound built specially for tax-free Europeans just outside Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Except for the weather, which was either blue or grey, depending how you chose to view it.
No vernacular touches linked these buildings to anything that spoke about place or belonging, no design innovations hinted to us at a sense of creativity within. Every surface and object was a recognisable label, from the stainless steel kitchen to the many fittings in the en-suites bathrooms, to the floor tiles in the hall.
The houses were so close to each other that you could swap house and garden magazines over the side wall.
In the brochure supplied to us gawkers, a series of photographs interpreted the life that might be lived there. A poetic life, perhaps, as the name implied.
We noted a woman who awaits the perfect moment to plunge the joystick of her cafetiere, while reading to a toddler on a well-upholstered sofa. His shoes are off - he must not dirty such a handsome couch. We found her elsewhere sitting on the obligatory wooden deck, same only child at her feet, arm in a defensive position as she holds a cup, although the cafetiere had still not been plunged.
Social housing will not disrupt this "desirable" new neighbourhood, as recent housing recommendations would prefer - the place is a ghetto, a reservation for those who can afford it. Yet you can't escape a pecking order - differently-sized and priced houses, along with some rogue apartments, will ensure that a rigid hierarchy operates within the walls.
This millionaire soap opera, this Brookside with a gold-coated credit card, is designed like a community of fire stations and with almost the same sense of alarm.
The question on many people's lips was why anyone with a £1 million would want to live here. One possible answer was because being able to afford the price was validation enough.
Someone tell that woman her cup is empty. When she thought it runneth over all along.