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The Daily PollSOARING HOUSE PRICES mean that, on paper at least, Irish households are wealthier now than any time during the boom.
The latest data from the Central Bank shows that the net worth of Irish households rose to a record €732 billion in the first quarter if 2018.
This equates to €150,789 per person and is higher than Celtic Tiger peak that came in the second quarter of 2007, the Irish Times reports.
The figure is calculated by adding the total value of all financial assets, including property, savings and investments, and subtracting debt.
Household debt has also dipped to its lowest level since 2004, however Ireland still has the fourth highest in the European Union.
So today we’re asking: Are you wealthier now than during the boom?
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USC HAS to go!!it isnt paying to work 40 hours or do overtime ,put some money back on peoples pockets!they are talking about a savings incentive in the budget??they will find a way to tax it i suppose!!???
@Damien McGrath: ÚSC needs to stay, in general we need to pay more taxes.
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: In theory its sound, but it was (and still is) a temporary tax and it should go away if we are now apparently wealthy again. At least reform it so that all that hard work is actually rewarded and not thrown away to the black hole that is Irish economics.
@Paul Cunningham: they are planning to merge it with PRSI over a couple of years so I read last week so it will stay in another guise but your right, need more transparency around exactly how PRSI/USC is used – a departmental breakdown of where the money goes.
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: no way
@Paul Cunningham: We aren’t wealthy, we owe €200,000,000 and a propped up GDP.
@Stephen Devlin: €200,000,000,000 forgot a few zeros there
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: I don’t. I got a small pay increase a couple of months ago, almost 53% of it went on taxes.
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: absolute rubbish paying more taxes when there is no accountability or transparency on spend.
@Stephen Devlin: yes the national debt is around 200 billion and the government is just kicking the can down the road, Also with a no deal brexit looming Ireland’s economy is in a very fragile state,
Meanwhile the same banks the people bailed out are blatantly screwing the Irish people yet again
@Damien McGrath: we have to pay those civil servants gold plated pensions !
USC here to stay !
@Shawn O’Ceallaghan: the last thing we need is more taxes. What we need is accountability so w*****s in power will stop squandering our money.
You don’t see trolleys left outside the Tesco car park with a euro coin still in it like 2006, that’s for sure
@Paul Cunningham: those were the days man!
Did a masters during the recession. Worked very long hours. Got several promotions, so yes, Im better off than I was 10 years ago. I find that people who reject overtime because its “Not worth their while”, are also the people who don’t go that extra mile at work……This is reflected at reviews and promotion decisions…….So maybe that overtime was worth your while, is what I often think…..
@Michael Carty: Why should people do unpaid overtime. If it’s expected, that’s even worse…
@Jane Alford: I never said they should do unpaid overtime?!!
@Jane Alford: He’s not saying it unpaid overtime, he’s saying that people feel that if they do any extra hours the tax man will benefit not the worker!
@Liam Whelan:
what he says makes sense
if i were to work 16 hours over weekend sat/sun
id get full pay for saturday and sundays pay would be lost on tax
in saying that i still do it when i can
@Liam Whelan: Both benefit. Its 50/50. I do think the higher rate of tax is applied on a very average salary and this should be addresses.
@Jane Alford: who mentioned unpaid?
@Michael Carty: i avoid overtime because i dont get paid for it… i think thats a valid reason not to do it
@Shannon Cassidy: Totally agreed but don’t think anyone is suggestion that?
@Michael Carty: I’ve never had a job where overtime was paid. It was in the contract that it was sometimes expected but that’s all. What industries have paid overtime?
@SC: Catering, healthcare, any factory job I’ve ever known, , builders when they work Saturday…..
@Michael Carty: Aren’t you lucky enough to be able to afford an masters during a recession and able to work long hours and paid for it? I would say to you that not many people in the recession had that luxury.
@Michael Carty: Oh. It doesn’t really exist in the professional sphere. I’d say you’d get paid more in a professional salaried job than an unskilled job even with paid overtime. Doing overtime in catering or a factory is a waste of time in a sense because you would be better off long term putting that time into studying something that pays better and won’t give you a bad back by 50, and also you won’t be able to do overtime when you start to have real grown up responsibilities like children and elderly parents.
@SC: saying overtime is not financially worth it because of the high top tax rate is like saying a pay rise is not worth it.
Anything extra you earn will be at the top rate lads, that’s life.
There’s enough tax taken by the government if we didn’t have to pay for bank bailouts quangos and all the money wasted by TDs like e voting machines we would be grand
@high ho silver: Shush, shush, we aren’t allowed talk about the squandering of our hard earned cash by these clowns who are completely detached from reality. Then the usual accounts appear to defend them and tell us we are wrong!
@flabar oflabar: We voted them in again and again and again. So we are the problem
@high ho silver: every cent taken in tax’s goes on social protection. €20 billion in taxes pays the €20 billion in social welfare payments
97% employment and 10,000 without a place to live. This is a direct result of a housing sector left to the free market. Something needs to change big shtyle!
@John O’Leary: if they did something it would effect our beloved banks. Who never did any harm but double our national debt.
Nobody is in reality. The bailout put an unprecedented amount of debt for decades to come. Currently at record highs, the level of debt per person in Ireland is about 40,000 euros, and that’s just the bailout and does not include the interest. There is also negative equity on mortgages after the house price crash, sky high rents, taxes on fuel, inflation, stagnating wages in the private sector, wholly insufficient pension coverage, and so on.
So no, the vast majority of Irish people are not in fact better off, whether they know it or not. And the ECB hasn’t started raising interest rates yet.
@The Quare Fella: Negative equity is only if you sell your house.
@Stephen Devlin: nope, you are in negative equity if the value of your property falls below the mortgage outstanding on it. Not dependent on whether you sell it or not.
In fact, you’ll unlikely be able to sell your house if you’re in negative equity as the bank will not recoup the loan amount.
@Yzo Sirrius: exactly…if I lash out €40k on an Audi A4 it’s not worth €40k next month…that ” you’re only in negative equity if you sell” is a codology spread by the banks
@Stephen Devlin: nonsense …if I owe €250000 mortgage on a house worth €200000 it doesn’t matter whether I sell or not/ I’m in negative equity
Who the feck is
@Sorcha Hendry instagram: @SorchaHendry86: I am, but I wasn’t working during the boom.
@Sorcha Hendry instagram: @SorchaHendry86: One businessman who lives mostly in a small Mediterranean Island.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: he deserves every penny. And all the pennies in every taxpayer bank account. And interest free loans.
Are you kidding? Sounds like something produced by the gov to make themselves look good. More fooling the nation!
@Adrian: indeed……and the gobs1ites more then happy to sallow the propaganda hook line and sinker.
Leprechaun Economics.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: Leprechaunomics!
@Fifty Shades of Sé: a more adequate representation would be minus your primary dwelling. That would leave must people with nothing. The central bank clearly are doing their best to push up prices. A fool makes the same mistake twice.
Boom? Don’t you mean the BORROW we are still paying for and will be for years to come.
Simple honest question. How could soaring house prices make the average person wealthier?? The media attempts at deluding us all into thinking that everything is great is this country is getting fairly desperate now. No mention of the fact that the average price of houses is now 10 times over the average industrial wage. That is where it all is getting pear shaped.
@Ian Oh: net worth
All you have minus all you owe.
People’s houses might make up 90% of their net worth.
@Ian Oh: this is a loaded question. Yes our personal borrowing are low. But with 2 people working and 3 kids we have little or no savings. Yes we have equity in our house but we need somewhere to live. Expensive houses are just a tax on the young.
Surely this is a p!ss take haha
I earn slightly more but my costs have risen enormously: rent, travel, food, etc. What this misleading calulated mean figure of €150K shows is that those at the top are earning exceptionally huge incomes compared to the average worker. This is why FG/Leo announced a few weeks ago that a household earning €100K couldn’t be considered rich any more, to ensure that rich people are not taxed more. But this isn’t a true picture of average households or families; this is a deceptive figure paraded as fact.
The only people that are now wealthier are those who managed to secure an investment property for 30k from an allsop auction and are getting upwards of €650pm to find their own mortgage leaving them very comfortable indeed
This is a nonsense report. People can’t function with imaginary money like banks do.
Wait,what,there’s a boom…when did that happen?Ooo its only for people who already had money,ahhh I see…
what Boom ?
Paper wealth is imaginary wealth, it’s delusional to think otherwise. Booming house prices are primarily a result of lack of supply in a carefully manipulated market that benefits the top 10% longterm. Most people of working age don’t outright own their homes (if they can get on the property ladder), they have merely borrowed the house from a bank until the mortgage is paid with interest. Lots of new cars on the road, again for the majority, purchased with borrowed money. The reality is, most people don’t have a lot of disposable income after the bills are paid and are vulnerable to the next orchestrated crash. The illusion of wealth paid for by credit is a dangerous game to play. Don’t become a debt slave because once caught in the spiders web, you have no real autonomy, you are in-fact owned by the system!
@Super Ted: the borrower is owned by the lender.
Pay down debt folks. You don’t need that new car.
@Niallers: agreed.
@Niallers: I can’t believe how stupid people are, borrowing for a car! Anything that gets you from A to B performs the same function. Buy a cheap car. Cars lose their value as soon as you buy them, which shows how little of the value is performance related.
More leprechaun economics I presume must be an election on the horizon.
Not with the p!ss take rent I’m paying
Yet everyone is here moaning as usual not doing anything what so ever about it..country full of moans and the fat cats sitting in there nice lovely houses with an increase in there wage cause there doing such a tremendous job..course there going to keep taking if all ye do is moan.
With the cost of living so high how could you be better off,WEgot a raise of 5 euro in to pension,but it was not paid for 6 months,which ment it was only worth 2,50 euros,In the coming budget if they were to index link the pensions and paid it without delay,then we might get something worthwhile,THE 2,50 would only get you a sliced pan and one litre of milk,
@James Mc Loughlin: be careful what you wish for (i agree it should be indexed) but I think the € 5 increase significantly outstrips current inflation rates, which is currently 0.8%
@joe: I can never understand why they don’t include the cost of rent when calculating inflation. For most workers it’s their main expenditure.
Leo must have found a few more coins to put into his smoke and mirror spinning machine
This is a rubbish poll based on a rubbish report that is taken completely out of context.
The majority of this rise in household’ wealth’ is based on the rise in property values. Yet, as we know for a lot of people, property certainly is no measure of ‘wealth’ and certainly not when you’re only talking about the family home, where as we all know a lot of families are still struggling and there is still a huge personal and mortgage debt crisis in play..but of course none of this real context suits the narrative being spun here
Considerably more well to do, because I was lucky enough to buy a house at the bottom of the market. Now valued at 85% more than we paid for it. Estate agent called me to ask did i realise how much more it was now worth to see if interested in “upsizing”. Crazy. He actually expected us to want to move somewhere bigger with a larger mortgage because it was “within our means”. He couldnt seem to understand that we were happy in our “little semi d”. Sensible enough to avoid borrowing unless absolutely necessary. Driving an 8 year old car as the idea of borrowing to buy a new car makes my skin crawl! Living well within our means and living a relatively stress free life compared to a lot of our friends who either haven’t been as lucky or aren’t as sensible.
Donuts, Cocktails, Premium Clothes, Apartment with balcony, Dodgy Coke. Good times are back baby, all paid for on me credit card.
@Stevie Doran: Had to laugh at the dodgy coke part, the boom is back lads.
I earn a lot more but rent and health insurance swallowed all of it. I had to sell my car as well. I was honestly just as well off working 18 hours a week in 2006 when my rent was only €300 and the public health service wasn’t falling apart.
A household earning €100k is not rich! Two salaries at €50k.
Yes I am much better off than during the boom. Anyone working in a highly skilled job where pay increase and promotions will be. There are more people out there like this than people on here would like you to believe.
Ní raibh mé ach i mo pháiste tríd an boom
Padded figures are pretty.
No I am not. I have been saddled with an odious debt of 42000 euro,the same as every other man woman and child in this state. Thanks for the ridiculous question by the way
Get rid of usc .. and lower vat rate ..
“People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn’t seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real.” – Charlie Brooker ,Oct 2008
Earning a good deal more but no better off.
What a ridiculous poll like who runs this . Sack them . Please stop putting up total rubbish when you realistically majority of us haven’t felt recovery unless your a politician
Would be interested to know the average age of people voting in this poll. 15 year old would now be 27, so could not really have an opinion surely
Must be a boring day in the Central Bank if they threw this statement out there to see how much of a laugh it would get.
Hell no im not better off. 4.2/10
This country is a joke for the working person
Usc… Tax… Travel… Diesel.. Petrol.. Insurance etc… The worker be better off at home
Yes very much so
Now that the public service, from consultants, to ministers, TDs, right down to other ranks, are on a pay & conditions restoration graph thanks to trade union action, how about a bit of republican Egalite & Fraternite in this years budget to restore the pensions of those still hit by the Noonan levies.
This has to be the most unjust state snatch of all, hitting people who did provide for their retirement, plus paid their taxes, up to 60% in earlier times, & now have to suffer lowered fixed pensions for the remainder of their lives.
For what?, to create employment for foreigners in the hospitality businesses & smart suited accountants, to create value for hotel investors by lowering the vat to 9%, sell off the NAMA portfolio to vultures at knockdown prices?
No automatic pension deductions.
USC has to go and the rediculously unfair Pension Related Deduction tax also needs to go. Low paid public servants are crippled with these taxes!
Home prices are soaring but the average take home pay remains flat, that means the homes are debts not assets.
have your say