Ireland after NAMA

My colleague, Adrian Kavanagh, has designed a very simple but clever metric to explore the recently published data on general health from the 2011 Census. Calculated at local authority, traditional county, provincial and state level, it shows an overall weighted score* based on the levels of self reported health in each area. The results are presented in the table below and seem to make intuitive sense.

The national average for the state is 149.92. We then see that the range of scores that in essence give us a score for healthicity or healthiness. The area with the highest score and therefore the least healthy, is Limerick City with 164.03. At the other end of the scale, the area with the lowest score and by extension, the most healthy, is Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Looking at the other local authorities with high scores/low healthicity, we can see a good mix of urban and rural areas which makes sense in terms of extremes of urban and rural poverty. By comparison, Galway City fares better than the other urban areas while the bulk of the counties in the low score/high healthicity categories seem to be the suburban and urban region counties around Dublin and Cork which typically have younger and relatively affluent age-income profiles.

Longer term it will be a very interesting process to see how robust this measure is in relation to other associated measures of poverty and deprivation. Recalculating this data at ED level and comparing the ranked results with deprivation scores may confirm this relationship, though issues of age-standardisation also have to be considered and applied. In addition, there will be some pockets of poverty in affluent counties like Dún-Laoghaire Rathdown and Fingal which will only emerge from more fine-scaled geographical analysis.  

 Ronan Foley, Centre for Health GeoInformatics, NUI Maynooth.

* The score is calculated on the basis of weighting the percentage for ‘very good’ by 1, the percentage for ‘good’ by 2 and all the way through to weighting the percentage for ‘very bad’ by 5. This ends up by balancing out the scores across all responses but giving a higher level of impact, in poor health terms, to the ‘very bad’ and ‘bad’ responses. It also gives a sense of levels of variation from the national average.

This morning saw the release of the second summary publication presenting the results of the 2011 census relating to socio-economic topics. Some quick reflections on employment trends. The headline figures are shocking, but don’t come as a surprise. In April 2011 the labour force stood at 2.23 million, an increase of about 123,000 or 5.8 per cent since 2006. The average annual increase of 1.1 per cent reflects a serious slow down compared to the previous, inter-censal period when growth averaged 4 per cent. Numbers at work fell by about 123,000 over the five-year period while the number of unemployed workers increased by about 245,000, up 136.7 per cent.

 In April 2011, the unemployment rate as defined by the Census was 19 per cent (this is not the same as the official unemployment rate as defined by the ILO, which stood at 14.3 per cent). The 19 per cent figure arguably underestimates the scale of the problem if we take account of the fact that a substantial number of workers have moved out of the labour force for a range of reasons. Apart from the emigration vent, the report shows that the student population grew by 16.9 per cent since 2006. In particular, the male student population has experienced a strong increase with participation rates for 19 to 24 year of males increasing from 27.1 in 2006 to 38.9 per cent in 2011. Against the background of very high male youth unemployment rates (41.1% for 20-24 year old males) we may assume that quite a number of young males are finding refuge in the education sector. Overall, the total number of people outside the labour force was up by about 110,000.

Geographically, there are substantial differences in how the various local authorities fared. Limerick City, Donegal and Waterford City are topping the unemployment league with unemployment rates between 25 and 29 per cent. On the other end, below average unemployment rates are evident in Dublin City (18.5%) and its suburbs Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown (11.2%) and Fingal (16%), the commuter belt counties Kildare ( (17.9%) and Meath (18%), Cork County (14.8%), Limerick County (17.5%) and Galway County (18.1%). The greatest percentage point increases in the inter-censal period were experienced in Offaly, Wexford and Limerick City. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin City and Galway City experienced the smallest increase.

The general pattern is one of relatively low unemployment rates in the commuter belts of the main cities. The main cities are characterised by higher unemployment rates than their commuter zones but Dublin City (18.5%), Galway City (18.6%) and, to a lesser degree, Cork City are performing much better than Waterford City and Limerick City. In addition Dublin City, Galway City and Cork City have experienced amongst the lowest percentage point increases. Unemployment appears to be more a regional issue than a city-hinterland issue. These figures corroborate the findings of a recent analysis by Proinnsias Breathnach and me of the annual Forfás Employment Survey which monitors employment trends in firms which have received assistance from the government’s economic development agencies (see here). We showed how almost 80 per cent of jobs created by new foreign firms in the last decade were located in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The share of these three Gateways of all foreign employment rose markedly, from 49% to 58%, while Waterford and Limerick are losing share.

The Census analysis at Electoral Division level shows that substantial intra-city differences exist. Over half of the country’s unemployment 81 ‘blackspots’ (EDs where unemployment rates exceeded 35%) are found in Limerick City, Cork City, Dublin, City, Waterford City and South Dublin.

At an industrial level the greatest loss in employment occurred in the construction sector (-120,000) followed by manufacturing (-50,000). Most of the services sectors experienced employment growth. Employment in education grew by over 36,000, up 28.4%. Interestingly, employment levels in the financial services sector were up 9 per cent since 2006. I suggest that here the internationally traded segment is making up for the job-losses on the domestic front. Even ignoring the anomaly of the Irish construction industry, these figures reflect an ongoing international trend towards a tertiarisation of the economy. The services sector now accounts for 78 per cent of all employment in Ireland.

Whether this is a good or bad development clearly depends on the type of service jobs and the related earnings. The dynamics of persons at work by intermediate occupational group give us some insight – although the taxonomy is not unproblematic and lumps quite different occupations into the same categories (for a discussion see, Breathnacht, 2007). Most of the better paid informational economy occupations are experiencing employment growth. Managers and executives increased from about 123,000 to about 138,000, up 12.3 per cent. Other high-earning occupations experiencing growth include scientific and technical, health and related, teachers, central and local government, computer software and other professional. On the other end, we note gains in the relatively low earning personal services (up 7.8%) and sales (4.0%) occupations. Importantly, these two categories now account for over a quarter of all people at work. The falls in clerical and office occupations (-15.3%), engineering and allied trades (-27.3%), electrical trades (-30.2) and other manufacturing (-52.4%) may point to “a disappearing middle”. Although more detailed analysis is required the data seem to suggest a continued professionalization as well as polarisation of our society, a trend that started in the 1990s (Breathnach, 2007).

The spatial distribution of the various occupations has important implications for inter-regional spatial polarisation and balanced regional development. The data on socio-economic groups show clearly how the higher-income earning social groupings ‘employers and managers’ and ‘higher professionals’ are disproportionately concentrated in the East Region (See Rob Kitchin’s post today).

Chris.vanegeraat@nuim.ie

Context.

 The results for the newly introduced general health question from the 2011 Census have just been released (June 28^th, 2012). The decision to ask such a question is a laudable one and the first ever attempt to ask a question of this type. It is a self-reported question with census respondents asked to tick a box as to the health status of head of household as well as all household members. Five categories were presented to allow respondents to say if their health was; very good/good/fair/bad/very bad. Such questions are common to census outputs in other jurisdictions and have generally been found to be useful for two broad reasons. Firstly, the value of collecting this data within a census allows for much deeper spatial analysis of the patterns of good and poor health across the country. Knowing something about these deeper geographies of health will be vitally important for a number of state, semi-state and private organizations and agencies. Secondly, asking a general health question within the Census allows analysts to also explore and cross-tabulate relationships, both numeric and geographical, between health status and associated variables in the Census such as social class, education, disability and informal caring. In this way, one can analyse the potential explanatory causes of good/poor health and relate these to wider casual factors and provide good empirical material for wider social and economic profiling.

 Overall Results

As the first time a general health question was asked in the census, the response suggests a generally good level of self reported health for all respondents. The results show that 60.3% reported they were in ‘very good’ health and a further 28% in ‘good health’. Just over 8% recorded their health as ‘fair’, with a small number, 1.3% recording their health as ‘bad’ and an even smaller number, only 0.3%, recording their health as ‘very bad’.  In addition, 2.1% of the population did not answer the question. The total proportion of the population who answered Very Good or Good accounted for 88.3% of the population, which tallies well with recent survey responses of 84% for the same question as reported by the OECD Health at a Glance Report from 2009[1]. Comparisons with country level reporting across the rest of the British Isles suggests the Irish population to consider themselves much more healthy than populations in those other countries. As Table 1 below shows, when compared with the most recently available data from 2001 for Northern Ireland, Scotland and England/Wales, the rates of good health are much higher in Ireland. This is likely to be for two reasons. One is that the phrasing of the question is slightly different, but more importantly, the Irish question provided 5 optional categories whereas the UK questions asked only whether health was Good, Fair and Not Good. This is likely to have thrown up significantly different responses. Given the broad level of agreement across the UK in 2001, it is interesting to speculate that recoding and re-aggregating the Irish data into three categories, as Very Good, Good and combining Fair/Bad/Very Bad as a sort of generic ‘not good’ response, shows a closer match (see adjusted figures in Table 1 below). The use of ‘fair’ in both categorizations makes such an aggregation problematic, but makes for an interesting comparison nonetheless.

 Table 1 General Health Results across British Isles, 2001-2011

As the CSO’s preliminary analysis suggests, there is a strong relationship for example, between social class and health, with the affluent Professional Class reporting levels of Very Good Health at 75.2%, that are significantly higher than those for Unskilled Workers at 45.3%. With the release of more detailed data at electoral division (ED) and small area (SA) level, it will also be important to compare the health question against deprivation scores to further deeper our understanding of relationships between health, poverty and inequality. If results are comparable to other countries, the inverse relationship between deprivation and good health should be both apparent, and consistently identifiable down to neighbourhood level.

Geographical Patterns

As the CSO identify in their preliminary reporting[2], it is possible to map the rates of good and poor health by local authority and county across the country but with some important caveats at this early stage. Clearly counties with significantly older populations come out with poorer health status so to get a more accurate measure, it will be necessary to perform age-standardisation adjustments to take this into account. In addition, it is also clear that in general urban areas have lower levels of very good health than some of the ‘younger’ counties in their hinterlands. The CSO preliminary report provides a map of ‘very good’ health. But a map of a cumulative ‘bad/very bad’ health status, Figure 1b below, shows us a pattern of relatively high rates in the cities of Limerick, Dublin, Waterford and Cork as well as rural parts of Central Connacht, Longford and Tipperary South. Having this information makes it possible for example to compare with other regularly used indicators of mortality and morbidity, though few of these are available at any meaningful spatial scale. One example, drawn from preliminary results from a HRB-funded project being carried out at the Centre for Health GeoInformatics at NUI Maynooth, shows age-standardised mortality rates for 2006 (Figure 1a). The rates are calculated for the population under 75, a proxy measure of premature mortality. While this is a 26 county, rather than a 34 local authority map, the results are quite different. Updating the map to include the cities would be likely to improve the match, but it may be that the inclusion of the ‘fair’ category in Figure 1b might see a better correlation. In addition, deeper analysis on the disability data, as a proxy of limiting long-term conditions, might also throw up a sharper correlation.

 Figure 1.     a) ASMs (per 100k), 2006                

b) % with Bad/Very Bad Health, 2011  

Future directions.

It is very exciting to have this new data available for visual and statistical analysis. As well as cross-tabulations and comparisons with other Census data, it may also be used to compare with proxy measure of potential health care demand, such as the % of residents in each county in receipt of a medical card and other primary care supports. In addition, the mapping of disability data may also enable analysts to uncover and verify relationships between disability and health status and explore this geographically. In the different UK censuses, there is an additional question on limiting-long term illness which typically throws up much higher rates (20.4% for NI, 18.2% for England & Wales) than forIreland.  Given the better match between the new data for people reporting a disability, 13% in Census 2011, this suggests that the re-phrasing of the question is moving a little closer to the type of question used elsewhere and acts as a proxy for chronic illness levels. One advantage perhaps of the Irish census question in its use of five rather than three categories, is an ability to really pick out those with genuinely poor health, which may also prove useful in predicting potential future demand for health services. Indeed, given the paucity of detailed spatial information on the utilization of both hospital and general practitioner services inIreland, this may act as a subtle push to produce better spatial forecasting of demand on health services. Finally, the provision of a general health question is not unproblematic. All censuses are self-reported and therefore are, to an extent, unverifiable. The introduction of a new question, especially one as relatively subjective as health status, will always have associated teething problems. As noted above, the way in which the question is posed will also affect the results. But the data is likely to be useful in a whole variety of fields and will be used at a range of scales from local partnership work up to cross-border and international comparative scales. As a medical/health geographer, for whom any sort of health data, especially those collected at a range of meaningful geographical scales, is crucial, the CSO are to be lauded for suggesting and collecting this valuable dataset.

 Ronan Foley, Centre for Health GeoInformatics.

The census shows that between 2006-2011, the total number of post 15 year old students in the country has risen by 16.9% from 349,596 to 408,838 (figure 1).  This rise has occured despite the decline in the age cohort presently finishing school (there are 55,865 seventeen year olds, as opposed to 82,614 thirty year olds).  Given the present baby boom, numbers are set to grow even more strongly in the coming years which in turn will place enormous stress onto the third level sector to provide additional places, which will require a capital building programme and additional staffing given already very high staff-student ratios.

Figure 1

The data also shows a very clear relationship between the level of education attained and the employment status of individuals, with the higher the qualifications obtained the more likely the person is to be in employment (figure 2).  For example, the unemployment rate for people who had attained at most a primary education was 33.7% as opposed to 7.8% for those with a third level degree or higher.  This is reflective of the changing nature of the Irish economy as it becomes more dependent on high skilled manufacturing and services, and FDI investment, but is also reflective of the unemployment fallout of the present crisis with most jobs being lost in construction and the services sectors that require fewer qualifications.

Figure 2

In Census 2011, a new question on the main field of study of the highest qualification completed to date (excluding secondary school qualifications) was asked for the first time, extending a question that used to be directed only at third level graduates.  The data reveals the educational background and skills of people in the labour market.  Social sciences, business and law dominate, roughly three times the size of science, maths and computing.  Given the difficulties of recruiting in some sectors of the economy, such as IT, the latter seems to be one area that needs to grow.

Figure 3

The data in the three graphics above also provides some detail on gender.  Balance on the overall participation post-15 has improved slightly, with a growth in male participation.  Women in the labour force are more likely to be employed than males, regardless of qualification level.  There are notable differences in the fields of study taken by males and females, with males dominating engineering, manufacturing and construction, agricuture and veterinary.  Women dominate health and welfare, education, social sciences, business and law, and services.  This domination for some sub-areas of work is very stark, for example, women dominate child care and youth services (97.3%), secretarial and office work (96.7%) and hair and beauty services (96.3%).

Rob Kitchin

This is Ireland, Part 2, was released this morning.  It provides macro-level (national and county) results for a broad set of socio-economic data: labour force, occupation, education, health, social class, travel pattern. There are some maps at ED level for unemployment and a couple of occupational sectors, but the full ED and Small Area data set will not be released until later in the summer.  At that stage, we’ll be able to get a much more detailed sense of how the economic crash has played out socio-economically at a local scale.

In this post, I’m just going to concentrate on the socio-economic group and class results.  Analysing these at a county level is problematic because aggregation effects mask the highly variable way in which these play out locally, nevertheless we can see the broad pattern changes.

Socio-economic grouping classifies the entire population into one of ten categories based on the level of skill and educational attainment of their occupation (inc. those at work, unemployed or retired, with dependents classed on the basis of whom they are deemed to be dependent).  There has been growth between 2006-11 (see Figure 1) at the higher, more skilled end of this classification, with increases in employers/managers, higher professional, lower professional and non-manual, whilst those dependent on manual work have declined (in line with job losses in related sectors such as construction).  Moreover, there is a broad spatial pattern to the data with a greater proportion of the highest two categories in and around Dublin reflecting the higher proportion of FDI and public sector jobs around the capital (see Figure 2).

There are also some marked gender contrasts in socio-economic group (Figure 3), with strong differences in the gender profile of some classes.  For example, men make up a much stronger proportion of manual, farmers, agricultural workers, self-employed, and are marginally more likely to be employers/managers, higher professional, semi-skilled and unskilled.  Women make up a strong proportion of lower professional, non-manual and other.  Whilst the balance of the top two classes of employers/managers and higher professional are getting better, it seems that a glass ceiling does still exist.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

The socio-economic group data is used as the basis for assigning households into a social class, based on almagmating occupations with similar skill sets together to produce seven classes: professional workers, managerial and technical, non-manual, skilled manual, semi-skilled, unskilled and other.  Figure 4 shows the distribution of social class by local authority.  Clearly the standout LAs are in the cities.  DLR has a disproportionate number of professional and managerial/technical classes, whereas Cork City, Waterford City and Limerick City have low rates compared to their surrounding hinterlands, reflecting the suburbanisation of professional/managerial labour.

Figure 4

Rob Kitchin

The AIRO team have taken the data from the CSO’s Residential Property Price Index report and compiled it into an interactive data visualisation.  It provides details on overall price drop, year-on-year drop, and RPP index score for all properties, houses and apartments nationally, Dublin only, and nationally minus Dublin.  Click on the image below to connect to the data visualisation, then just click on the check boxes/drop down menus to change the data, and click on the graph itself to get specific information.

Eoghan McCarthy and Rob Kitchin

The latest CSO house price report has been released by the CSO.  What the data show is that “Residential property prices grew [nationally] by 0.2% in the month of May. In Dublin residential property prices rose by 0.2% in May but were 17.5% lower than a year ago. Dublin house prices increased by 0.5% in the month but were 17.7% lower compared to a year earlier. Dublin apartment prices were 16.3% lower when compared with the same month of 2011.  The price of residential properties in the Rest of Ireland (i.e. excluding Dublin) rose by 0.1% in May … Prices were 14.2% lower than in May 2011.”

The piece of data that the media are likely to focus on is that Dublin houses have now not fallen for three months in a row, growing very marginally each month.  In other words, prices for Dublin houses seem to be potentially stablising.  Before we get ahead of ourselves my view would be that prices have to stabilise for at least 6-9 months before we can start to call the bottom as the market is still fragile and there have been other periods on the way down where it appeared to level off before then falling again.  Moreover, the year-on-year reduction is still large.  Dublin apartments still seem fragile – they have fallen the most from peak (61%), fell again last month after two months of not falling further.  Nationally, excluding Dublin, seems fragile still and one would expect prices to fall as much as Dublin prices in the long term given levels of oversupply outside the principal cities.  Dublin does have relatively normal levels of housing vacancy (4.9% according to Census 2011) but not apartments (18.6%), so it does seem supply/demand might be coming into line for houses (particularly in South Dublin where vacancy is 3.4%) but certainly not apartments.  There is oversupply of houses and apartments everywhere else, including the other cities.  It should also be noted that the CSO index does not including cash sales and is based on a relatively small number of transactions.

Basically what this means, is whilst the indications are positive for Dublin houses, we should be careful not to read too much into the data until we have a time-series of stabilisation, and the property market remains very fragile.

Rob Kitchin

The front cover of the Indo today is a piece entitled: ‘Central Bank figures ‘overstating’ number in mortgage crisis‘.  The piece argues that the issue of mortgage arrears is not as problematic as it might be assumed from the figures.  Noting that 77,630 mortgages are more 90 days in arrears at the end of March 2012, the argument is that the “figures include several types of borrowers who are no longer in trouble [such as] those who missed payments long ago and have since resumed paying normally; those who fell behind and agreed ‘restructuring’ deals with their banks to lessen monthly payments; those who have successfully done more informal deals to work through their mortgage problems.”  So, is it the case that the mortgage crisis is overstated?

My answer would be no, it’s not overstated: there is undoubtedly a crisis.  In all these cases, the mortgage holder is still 90+ days in arrears and still has the capital and interest to pay down over the life of the mortgage.  They might be meeting the restructured payments, but their mortgage is still in trouble until it is back on the correct payment schedule and the arrears paid down.  The Indo piece also suggests that the 77,630 includes people who have restructured and are not in arrears on the new plan.  It does not.  The Central Bank figures are clear on this.  It breaks down like this:

116,288 accounts either in arrears of over 90 days or restructured and performing as per new schedule (15.2%), of which:

77,630 are in arrears of 90+ days (10.2%) a proportion of which has restructured but nonetheless are still 90+ days in arrears (41,054 mortgages are restructured and are in arrears of varying lengths, both more and less than 90 days).

38,658 are restructured and are performing as per new schedule, though this is an impaired schedule that will have to be re-regularised at some point.

More worryingly:

59,437 of mortgages are 180+ days in arrears at end-March 2012, equivalent to 7.8 per cent of the total stock.

In 11,378 cases a formal demand has been issued (but where Court proceedings have not been issued)

In 3,080 cases court proceedings have been issued to enforce debt/security on a mortgage

The Indo also claims that “The Central Bank figures — which show that more than 10pc of households are in arrears — also fail to capture a “significant” improvement in payments that some senior bankers claim they have seen.  This is because the quarterly reports focus on households that owe more than three months of mortgage payments. This means that a change in arrears cases won’t be reflected in the figures for three months.”

The Central Bank data shows that the figures for those in 90+ days in arrears has been consistently growing over the past number of years.  The figures at the end of June will give us some indication as to whether things have improved, but it seems unlikely given the trend for people is to slip in 180+ days arrears rather than out of the +90 days, and even then it is more likely that they will become restructured rather than impair free.  To claim that a restructured mortgage is one that is not in trouble is incredibly disingenuous; it is restructured precisely because it is in crisis.

In terms of the restructuring there are a number of approaches being taken:

Interest Only Payment  27,798
Reduced Payment (greater than interest only) 13,854
Reduced Payment (less than interest only)  11,390
Term Extension   9,667
Arrears Capitalisation  9,576
Payment Moratorium  3,400
Hybrid  3,831
Deferred Interest Scheme  178
Other  18

One other thing to note about the Central Bank data is that it relates to a “mortgage on the residential property which is or will be occupied by the borrower as his/her principal private residence”.  It does not include buy-to-let or buy-to-flip mortgages related to property the holder is not living in.  It would be very interesting to know about arrears and restructuring with respect to these mortgages, which in 2007 were 27% of all new mortgages.  The suspicion is that these are in just as bad a state as residential mortgages.

There is no doubt that having 116,288 (15.2%) mortgages in arrears of 90+ days or restructured constitutes a crisis.  1 in 6 mortgages in the state is in some form of trouble.  The restructuring of payments is helping households, but just because a household is now managing to make payments does not mean the mortgage is now performing as it should – it is either still in arrears or the payment is not on schedule to pay off both the capital and interest owed.  I’m not really sure what the Indo is hoping to achieve with the article, other than to make a bad situation seem better than it actually is or to try and bolster confidence in the banks.   I doubt it’s made anyone who continues to struggle with paying their mortgage feel any better.

Rob Kitchin

The Department of Environment persists in stating that 1.6m households are liable for the household charge.  This is patently not the case.  It is houses that are liable for the tax not households.  If a person owns two houses – one they live in, one a holiday home, they pay twice.  They wouldn’t do that if it was a tax purely on households.  The household charge is a tax on property.  There are 1.994m habitable housing units in the state – they are all liable for the tax with some exemptions.   Here is some useful data compiled by the Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes from official statistics and Dail questions.  It gives a much more thorough picture of the liabilities relating to the household charge than the governments line, and that is the case whether you are for or against the charge.

1    Housing units in state     1,994,845    CSO

2    Unoccupied/vacant housing units unsold  18,636    Housing Development Survey, DECLG, 2011

3    Renting social housing   129,033    Census 2011, Table 39.

4    Renting voluntary housing    14,942    Census 2011, Table 39

5    Being bought from Local Authorities under shared ownership scheme    23,547    Census 2006. Doesn’t appear to be in Census 2011.

6    Mortgage interest relief    19,000     Keane Report

7    Housing units in unfinished estates    34,000     Money Guide Ireland

8    Number of landlords who registered Non Principal Private Residence (NPPR) in 2011    183,551   NAMAwinelake

9    Number of NPPR registered in 2011 for the NPPR Tax    339,431

10    Number of housing units for which the HHT was paid on 1st June 2012    915,408    Dail Question Ref No:   27986/12. Clare Daly.

11    Numbers waivered for HHT on 1st June 2012    17,167    Dail Question Ref No:   27986/12. Clare Daly.

12    Number of housing units registered to multiple accounts on 1st June 2012    332,900    Dail Question Ref No:   27986/12. Clare Daly.

13    Number of accounts to which more than one unit was registered on 1st June 2012    106,332    Dail Question Ref No:   27986/12. Clare Daly.

Figures calculated from above

14    Number of housing units liable to register for Household Tax (HHT)    1,808,687    (1-2-3-4-5)

15    Number of housing units liable to pay the Household Tax    1,755,687    (14-6-7)

16    Total number of property owners liable to register     1,469,256    (14-9)

17    Number of housing units actually registered on 1st June 2012    932,575    (10 + 11)

18    Number of housing units not registered on 1st June 2012    876,112   ( 14-17)

19    Number of NPPRs registered assuming the family home was also registered on the same account.    226,568    (12-13).

20    Number of property owners registered on 1st June 2012 (Accounts with LGMA) assuming each account also has the Principal Private Residence registered.    706,007    (10 + 11 – 19)

21    Number of property owners who have not registered.    763,249    (16-20)

22    % of property owners not registered    52

These figures seem to be correct, although there are some exception that need to be taken out of the total number of liable housing units (exemptions 2, 5, 6, 7 – all small, but not in the public domain; might account for up to c.20K units)

With thanks to Mick Murphy (National Treasurer of the Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes) for sending us the information.

Rob Kitchin

Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, has been on something of an environmental crusade of late. Fresh from his sabbatical during the Fiscal Treaty referendum, the Minister recently published Our Sustainable Future – A Framework for Sustainable Development for Ireland and finally ratified the Aarhus Convention. Embarrassingly, Ireland is the last country in Europe to ratify Aarhus and it appears that the Minister is determined to have an unblotted copybook before he heads off to the Rio + 20 Earth Summit later this month. Early indications are that Rio +20 will amount to little, with major differences between developed and developing countries and it will be ‘business as usual’. The Minister is also busily attempting to close the plethora of European Court of Justice judgements against Ireland on our environmental performance before taking over the EU presidency in 2013.

Such is the present universal lack of interest in environmental issues that these important announcements were barely covered in the media. Bizarrely, the Government decided that there would be no official launch (only a photocall) of the strategy and, as reported in the Irish Times, journalists were not even allowed to ask questions of the Minister or the Taoiseach on the subject. This may have something to do with the references in the document to ‘consider the scope and need for wider use of user charging’ (i.e. water charges, property tax) and environmental tax reform (i.e. carbon tax, septic tank charges) – all, of course, extremely politically sensitive issues.

I have previously posted on Ireland’s previous 1997 Sustainable Development strategy which was entirely disregarded throughout the ‘Celtic Tiger’ period. Ireland’s performance in almost every environmental indicator nose-dived dramatically over the past 15 years, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, water quality and fossil fuel dependency. Unfortunately the portents for this current strategy are equally bleak and it is most likely destined to become simply another glossy document adorning the shelves of policy makers.

The strategy does include a wide-range of welcome and well-intended policy goals. However, the sheer breadth of the cross-sectoral environmental, social and economic goals included in the strategy creates an implementation challenge of impossible scope and unmanageable complexity. On a more fundamental level however, the central challenge in implementing this strategy will be of-course the dichotomy between ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’ in modern capitalist societies. This ‘elephant in the room’ is habitually ignored by policy makers regardless of the compelling evidence to the contrary.

According to the strategy economic growth, social cohesion and environmental sustainability must move forward in a mutually supportive manner. This is to be achieved by decoupling (relatively) environmental degradation and resource consumption from economic and social development through a new paradigm of ‘sustainable consumption’. The difficulty is that recent production and consumption patterns have led to a substantial growth in wealth and national income (GDP) in Ireland. Indeed Ireland’s record economic performance between 2000 and 2007 was accompanied by a massive increase in resource consumption – the highest in Europe. The current economic development profiles of all developing economies (e.g. Brazil, China etc) are similarly strongly correlated with a massive increase in resource consumption.

Stacked against the objective of ‘sustainable consumption’ is the conventional response to the current economic recession which is to boost consumption, boost demand, and boost exports. Of course, this will require even greater consumption of resources, regardless of efficiency. The inconvenient truth is that there is a complete absence of evidence that it is possible to boost economic performance (growth) while reducing resource use. In fact, empirical research would strongly suggest that it is not possible. Any efficiency gain associated with the ‘weightless’ knowledge economy is simply achieved by externalising resource consumption to developing countries and nullified by the ‘rebound effect’. In fact, the only proven mechanism to reduce resource consumption, pollution and emissions is economic recession.

Ireland’s Ecological Footprint was, at the latest assessment, the tenth-highest per person footprint in the world. Our unenviable position at the top of the resource consumption league table is to a large extent as a consequence of our oil dependency. Ireland currently imports approximately €6 billion per annum and we are amongst the most oil dependent countries in the world, primarily as a consequence of our spatial development patterns and private car dependency. All recent research, including that of the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund, predicts a near doubling of oil price rises over the next twenty years. Of particular interest in the latter report is the conclusion that:

“..the assumption that technology is independent of the availability of fossil fuels may be inappropriate, so that a lack of availability of oil may have aspects of a negative technology shock. In that case the macroeconomic effects of binding resource constraints could be much larger, more persistent, and they would extend well beyond the oil sector”.

The new Government strategy notes:

“The world is facing into an uncertain future with peak oil, high energy prices, ecosystem degradation and a changing climate all key concerns. A systematic approach to managing this risk will be needed if we are to maintain our future prosperity and way of life.”

It is hard to think of a more fundamental challenge to Irish society and the global economy. The peaking of world oil production presents Ireland with an unprecedented risk management problem. However, there is no sense that the government would consider formulating a risk management strategy.  This typical response has drawn an exacerbated reaction from the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol.  Any strategy which does not at least question the all-pervasive accepted wisdom of the policy imperative for economic growth, or whether economic growth is actually possible in an era of oil price inflation, is simply ‘green washing’ and falls a long way short of what is urgently required.

Gavin Daly