Cooper Who Really Owns Ireland

How we became tenants in our own land - and what we can do about it
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-0-7171-9602-9
Verlag: Gill Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 448 Seiten

Through centuries of oppression, we were tenants in our own land. Today, despite our independence and new-found affluence, we are in the midst of a crisis. The question of who owns Ireland is once again taking on a sense of urgency. Is the land of Ireland still for the people of Ireland? In a deep and far-reaching investigation, journalist, broadcaster and No. 1 bestselling author Matt Cooper examines the power wielded by those who control the land where we live, work and play. Who are they, how did they acquire so much and what does it mean for ordinary citizens when the ownership of key resources like shopping centres, wind farms, forestry and data centres comes from outside? This is a story about how power and money influence and control the present and the future of Ireland ... sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. Filled with riveting detail, this compelling story of who really owns Ireland is an essential account of the issues that affect every single one of us living on this island.

Matt Cooper is a radio and TV broadcaster, newspaper columnist and bestselling author. Matt presents the daily news, current affairs and sports programme, The Last Word, on Today FM. He writes a weekly newspaper column for the Irish Daily Mail that is published each Saturday and 'The Last Post' column on the back page of the Business Post each Sunday. He was editor of the Sunday Tribune for over six years and their National Journalist of the Year. This is his sixth book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cooper, Matt

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

WHO OWNS IRELAND?

Land and property ownership have had a deep impact on Irish history and, arguably, its psyche. This was emphasised by the schooling many of us experienced growing up, with its focus on how British rule led to a denial of many rights to the Irish, particularly those of the Catholic faith, and especially to own our land. The landlord–tenant relationship was central to what we learnt about the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, the belief that essentially foreign landlords – even if born on this island because they professed to British nationality – had kept or sold the food that the general population needed. They were able to do so because they had confiscated the land and allowed only minimal holdings to the native population, for which they charged excessive rent. We had become tenants in our own land.

The late nineteenth-century rise in nationalism – and the early twentieth-century revolution that led to our independence from British rule – can be traced in large part to the formation of the Irish National Land League, Conradh na Talún, and what became known as the Land War, with the Catholic Church to the forefront of organising a political movement. The term ‘rack-rent’ became synonymous with excessive charges to tenants and evictions of those unable to pay; it became a hated feature of what was seen as British-enforced law on behalf of landlords. Land League co-founder Michael Davitt’s slogan of ‘The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland’ went into folklore. Resistance to evictions was organised, leading sometimes to violence. The twenty-first-century distaste in Ireland for evictions has its roots here.

The aspirations of the 1916 rebellion, as set out in the Proclamation of Independence, declare ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ and add in the same sentence ‘to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right …’ The Proclamation continues to assert the right to control but nowhere does it adequately offer a definition as to how the ownership of Ireland’s land should be shared by the citizens of this newly declared state. The Proclamation went on to guarantee ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts’.

Greatly influenced by deference to the Catholic Church, our political leaders did not embrace the Marxist or communist beliefs of shared ownership of land and the means of production and the sharing of the proceeds more equitably, which were taking hold in other parts of the world. The Catholic Church was opposed to godless communism – and any assault on private property rights – and that was effectively that as far as Ireland was concerned. As our new political classes emerged, the commitment to private property became entrenched. The 1937 Constitution of Ireland confirmed this, declaring that the State would vindicate the property rights of every citizen. This means that any individual or corporate entity has a right to own, transfer and inherit property and bequeath it upon death. The State has guaranteed to pass no law to abolish these rights. However, there is one caveat: Article 43 acknowledges that these rights ought to be regulated by the principles of social justice. This means that the State may pass laws limiting the right to private property in the interests of the common good.

This is all part of being a republic, a form of government in which a state is ruled by elected representatives of the citizen body. The government sets laws and rules, subject to change. It doesn’t mean that the people own everything in common or on a shared basis. We don’t live in some kind of socialist state. Ireland belongs to all of us as citizens, but some own the land and the property that sits on it, and others don’t, and wealth flows accordingly.

The State does control certain lands on our behalf. It owns and maintains commonly used pieces of land, such as the streets and roads and our public parks, and its commercial state bodies also acquire chunks to allow them to fulfil their mandates. However, the remainder of the country is owned by individuals, families, trusts, partnerships, companies, farmers, financial institutions, religious entities, sporting organisations, charities, co-ops, community groups, and others. Land (and the properties on it) is bought and sold, for profit or loss, or it is kept for generations. It is mortgaged or debt-free, bringing the banks and others who hold liens over property as security for loans into the equation and giving them power over borrowers. It produces income, or it does not. It is kept in good nick, or it is left derelict. It is owned by natives and foreigners. Increasingly, again, by foreigners, although that is very much part of an international trend.

Who owns the land and the properties that stand on it controls, in effect, much of our country. That impacts how everyone lives. The owners, subject to certain State-enforced restrictions, decide what gets put on the land and who gets to use it, if we can buy it from them or merely rent it, or even use it at all. The rights conferred upon private property mean that much of the space of the country is not available for access to us without the permission of the owners.

Land and property owners control the number of houses and apartments that the rest of us compete to buy or rent, the office spaces and factories where we go to work, the shops where we purchase our essential items and material luxuries, the restaurants and pubs where we eat, drink and meet, the green spaces and indoor arenas on which we play or watch others compete for our enjoyment, the venues where we enjoy cultural events, the farms on which our food is grown and livestock reared for slaughter or export, or where our power is generated.

Outside of the small patches of land that some of us own – usually nothing more than our homes on which many of us still owe mortgages – we are tenants on the rest of the island, paying the bills for the use of other people’s space. This matters because it excludes many – and provides great benefit to those who have been able to gain that control.

In Ireland, property is arguably the most valuable or important of what are called the asset classes. By mid-2022 the Central Bank of Ireland reported that the net wealth of Irish households had exceeded €1 trillion, with property ownership accounting for €649 billion of that. Property is the chief dividing line between rich and poor in this State. That gap is widening.

There has been an extraordinary transfer of ownership of land and property in Ireland since what has become known as The Great Recession which resulted from the global banking crisis of 2008 and lasted, roughly, to the end of 2012. One of the conditions of the humiliating rescue of the national finances by the Troika – the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – in late 2010 was the enforced sale of many State-controlled assets. This included, by virtue of the State taking responsibility for the liabilities of most of the banks, land and property. It contributed to the rescue of the State’s finances but created a whole new set of difficult dynamics that are not always fully understood.

As 2023 progressed, the issues around not having enough affordable housing for our rising population became the dominant political theme. Many of the complaints seemed contradictory. Rents for many were too high relative to income, despite laws to restrict rental increases in designated areas, yet simultaneously some landlords complained that they couldn’t get a sufficient return from their investments and sought to sell. A temporary ban on evictions ended in March 2023 amid considerable rancour; some tenants given notice by their landlords found there was nowhere for them to go, yet the government insisted that this would be better for the system in the medium to long term. Home builders said they couldn’t get planning permission to build on land they owned, yet tens of thousands of granted permissions had not been acted upon. Those who complained about there not being enough new housing were often at the forefront of objections that either delayed or denied construction. The system upon which everyone depended was mired in controversy because of internal shortcomings and possible illegality.

Those who wanted to buy from the limited stock often failed to get large enough mortgages. Many of those who had mortgages struggled as interest rates went up. Generational divides intensified. Meanwhile, environmental concerns about where people should live – the old rural/urban divide – returned, as did debate about the type and suitability of our housing stock.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine provided a shock to an international economic system still recovering from the unprecedented Covid shutdown; as 2023 progressed, it was clear that further change in the valuations and holding of land and property was upon us. Consumer price inflation – which is different from asset price inflation – had taken hold and even if the increase in prices had moderated somewhat, they were still rising. Central banks were making borrowing money more expensive by increasing interest rates, so...