The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Unleash the McQuaid redux! All this talk about an improvement in the housing market… April 30, 2012

Perhaps I’m far too cynical, but when I read Dan O’Brien in the IT telling us about Central Bank research that says:

Irish house prices were undervalued by between 12 and 26 per cent as of the end of last year.

And:

If correct, property prices could rise suddenly and significantly if the causes of the undershooting in prices were removed.

And then continuing:

The main reasons cited for the continued fall in prices are a lack of investor confidence, negative future house price expectations and an uncertain macroeconomic outlook. Additionally, “the requirement for substantial deleveraging within the Irish financial system and the associated issue of mortgage credit availability are also considered as significant reasons for the decline” according to the report.

I turn once more to Alan McQuaid of Bloxham, who although speaking from the belly of the beast has, at the least, a degree of consistency to his pronouncements. As noted before the weekend:

However, he said, there was unlikely to be a significant improvement to the market until the employment situation improved.

“Irish consumers will want to see the housing market stabilising before they feel confident about the economy overall. Even allowing for the Budget 2012 initiatives to boost the property market, as well as lower interest rates from the European Central Bank, the short-term risks to house prices remain to the downside in our view,” he said.

“Although the March data are a step in the right direction we don’t see any significant improvement in the housing market until the employment situation gets better and bank lending returns to some sort of ‘normality’, which is still some way off in our opinion.”

And has some wise words too as regards lending…

But analysts warned against too much optimism over the figures.

”Although these latest banking figures are encouraging to some degree, particularly in relation to the deposits side, the underlying message from the data is still one of overall weakness and difficulties in the sector,” said Bloxham’s chief economist Alan McQuaid.

”The bottom line is that Ireland remains a long way from where it wants/needs to be as regards credit demand/availability to get the domestic economy moving again. The reality is that until the banking sector crisis is fully resolved and things improve on the labour market front then the supply/demand for credit will stay subdued in our view, severely hampering the overall recovery prospects for the economy as a whole in the process.”

And there’s something uniquely depressing about reading the following in the SBP this weekend. Discussing the fact that there have been fifty homes sold this year in the €1m plus range – and accepting that compared and contrasted with the height of the boom that may be a pale shadow of what took place then, we are treated to the following:

Savills director Ronan O’Hara said the majority of the houses changing hands for more than Ђ1 million were not being sold on the open market, but quietly and without any advertising or publicity. He said the reduction in stamp duty rates in the last budget had made larger homes more attractive.
“It has made a difference. Many of the sales have been to couples with good salaries who are trading up from modest homes to trophy homes,” he said.

Trophy homes? Haven’t we been down this road once before in recent years and has nothing been learnt?

Maybe it’s me, but it seems there’s a bit of a media campaign to talk up the housing market, quite in defiance of the actuality.

Though if at the highest levels there’s a ‘recovery’ it seems to fit with what Garibaldy noted on Sunday about wealth in the UK and what Michael Taft has written here about the impact of the financial crisis on various sections of the society…

‘Artist of the Irish Revolution, the Cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh(1884-1916)’ April 30, 2012

James Curry, author of ‘Artist of the Irish Revolution, the Cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh(1884-1916)’, will give a lecture on this long neglected figure next Monday, April 30th, at 7pm in Saor-Ollscoil na hÉireann, 55 Prussia Street, Dublin 7pm – All welcome

1981 Hunger Strike – At Everyman Theatre, Cork, May 2012 April 28, 2012

Thanks to JL for forwarding this. Tickets available from: Box Office, Everyman Palace Theatre, 15 MacCurtain Street, Cork

Unleash the McQuaid! It’s house price data time again. April 27, 2012

I’ve been perhaps a bit harsh on Alan McQuaid of Bloxham, here and here for his identikit statements on the house price decline issue. But got to admit he brings a bit of much-needed sanity to the latest news trumpeted by the Irish Times that ‘house price decline slows for the first time in seven months’. Given the not inconsiderable role the IT played through affiliated entities and its own property supplements in the housing area over the past two decades one might think they would be a little…cautious… about the whole issue. But.. nope… not really.

RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY prices fell further in the year to the end of March, but the pace of decline slowed for the first time in seven months, according to new data published yesterday.
According to the Central Statistics Office, prices for homes fell by an average of 16.3 per cent on an annual basis last month, compared with 17.8 per cent in the year to the end of February.
However, on a monthly basis, there was no change compared with February. The last time there was a halt in monthly price declines was August 2010.

Though in fairness to the IT they were not alone. Our beloved Minister of Finance had this to say in another article…

Mr Noonan said for the first time in a long time house prices had marginally increased in Dublin in March, by less than 1 per cent.

Well that’s got to be good for that market. No? Which has seen the following:

According to Central Statistics Office figures, which do not take into account cash sales, the national index of house prices is now 49 per cent lower than its highest level in 2007.
Almost a 50 per cent drop since 2007. It makes one wonder where those current paragons of economic orthodoxy were in 2007 not to be able to discern that there was a bubble and the bubble was close to imploding.

And the current and future problem is, as noted by Glas Securities:

“While these figures are undoubtedly positive in the context of accelerating price falls since late 2010, it is worth noting that monthly price data can be volatile, particularly as the data is restricted to mortgage transactions and prices have still fallen 4.1 per cent in the first quarter,”

And McQuaid is even more downbeat/realistic.

…the March figures were an improvement on the previous two-month period, and offered signs of encouragement that the annual rate of decline has stabilised.
However, he said, there was unlikely to be a significant improvement to the market until the employment situation improved.
…
“Although the March data are a step in the right direction we don’t see any significant improvement in the housing market until the employment situation gets better and bank lending returns to some sort of ‘normality’, which is still some way off in our opinion.”

And this stability he mentions?

Bloxham is predicting a double-digit decline in house prices for the year, in the region of 15 per cent.

Surrogacy – redux April 27, 2012

Breda O’Brien was talking, coincidentally – given this post put up the week before last here, about surrogacy again. It’s strange. Bioethics is like catnip to me. In part because I have a passing acquaintance with some aspects of it, but perhaps more so because it so indelibly seems to be the future, like it or not. Anyhow, surrogacy… Using the Father Reynolds case as a hook with which to impale RTÉ for ‘bias’ she asserts:

There is a strong sense of mission in RTÉ, a desire to hold institutions and individuals to account, and to effect positive change. However, if a team becomes convinced they know the best “way forward” and are doing society a service by nudging it in that direction, the danger is that fundamental journalistic standards will be flouted.

And that:

I believe there is a “liberal bias” in RTÉ, although I prefer to call it an “illiberal bias”. True liberalism defends the expression of ideas with which it does not agree.

And also:

There is also a liberal bias in this paper. The difference is The Irish Times makes this clear, and people who buy it know what they are getting. RTÉ, as a public service broadcaster, has a very different remit. I would like to think people also buy this paper because it does its job well, and by and large, reports events fairly and accurately. RTÉ also does a very fine job with limited resources.

So she gives an example:

Even when potential problems are pointed out, RTÉ does not change. On a recent Prime Time programme on surrogacy, I said I would not appear as someone opposing surrogacy after a package full of beautiful babies, and grieving mothers who could not regularise their children’s situation, unless the package also tackled the serious ethical and moral dilemmas of surrogacy.
My request was ignored. Miriam O’Callaghan referred on air to the package as “positive towards surrogacy”. I was given four uncontested minutes to redress the emotional priming of the nine-minute package, followed by an interview with Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, who intends to legislate for surrogacy. This was considered balance. Not so much Prime Time, as “priming time”.

A number of thoughts are raised by this. Firstly O’Brien is coy about her own position. That ‘people might know what they are getting’ she might note in the article that she is no disinterested observer on these matters but is in fact a member of the Iona Institute, a socially (and to some degree economically) right of centre Catholic entity. No disgrace there, but something that should be made clear from the off. And it’s not as if she didn’t have an opportunity to do so. She says the following:

Valid points were made in the “package” preceding the studio discussion, such as when commentator David Quinn said Fr Reynolds was “fortunate” to have been accused of a crime which could be scientifically disproved, that is, of fathering a child. Had it been “merely” rape, there would have been no chance of reclaiming his good name.

David Quinn is, of course, another member of the Iona Institute.

Secondly, and in a way this is a more serious issue, she posits the concept of ‘balance’. But she, of all people, should know, as was noted here the week before last, the single best appraisal of the area of reproductive technologies and issues conducted in this state was the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction which reported in 2005 and whose findings have subsequently been sat upon by successive governments. And the findings of that report were strongly, overwhelmingly in fact, in support of surrogacy arrangements being introduced. In that context what is the nature of ‘balance’? She doesn’t represent, as best as can be judged, a mainstream view on these matters at least in regard to various stakeholders appointed by the state to examine the issue, but an outlier, and a very very marginal one at that.

And in both pieces on the issue she has remained silent about that report, perhaps because it is so profoundly inconvenient to her thesis.

What’s interesting though is how Iona itself will use cherry pick reports as they see fit. As one comment under the O’Brien article notes, their approach to gay marriage is a particularly revealing example of same. But so is their coverage on their website. Unlike O’Brien they actually mention the Commission for Assisted Human Reproduction:

The Government-appointed Commission for Assisted Human Reproduction recommended in 2005 that in surrogacy arrangements, the commissioning parents be deemed to be the legal parents.

One of the members of the commission, Christine O’Rourke, expressed dissent about this recommendation, saying that “the risks of exploitation and commodifcation” accompanying surrogacy outweighed its benefits.

Ms O’Rourke, Advisory Counsel to the Attorney General at the time, expressing her dissent in the CAHR’s report, recommended instead that surrogacy be prohibited.

She said that there was “a broad cultural consensus that a woman who has just given birth may be uniquely vulnerable and the removal of her baby against her will is repugnant, unless she poses a threat of immediate harm to the child”.

She added: “This social norm is reflected in Article 10(2) of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which obliges Contracting States to accord special protection to women who have just given birth.”


But even this is misleading. Let’s quote the CAHR Report again:

The majority of members were in favour of regulating surrogacy, and all members were strongly of the view
that commercialisation of the practice should not be permitted by the regulatory authority.
One member was strongly opposed to regulation and took the view that surrogacy ought to be prohibited.

Presenting the report in the way Iona does is to ignore the almost total agreement on the CAHR.

Does O’Brien represent a broader societal view? Perhaps, but we have no means of knowing how broad that view is in the absence of polling data (which I haven’t been able to find as of yet, though if it exists I’d be very grateful for links).

I’m not for a second denying O’Brien the right to represent her viewpoint or to promote this on RTÉ or wherever. Though in truth if she is getting four minute slots and newspaper column inches to do so she’s hardly in a marginalised position given the weighting we saw on the CAHR on the issue. Nor am I disputing that this is a difficult enough area which demands careful consideration – though I’m not antagonistic to surrogacy. What I am suggesting is that on this issue she protests too much and as I noted last week her shaping of her response to surrogacy is profoundly flawed.