Preview clip for the second episode of “In search of the Pope’s Children”.
Episode 2 of In Search of the Pope’s Children will be shown tonight at 9.30pm on RTE1.
Episode 2:
In this programme David examines our relationship, or national obsession, with property. New Ireland begins and ends with the property explosion. The boom has not just changed Ireland economically, it has changed us as a people and turned us into a nation of property speculators. Property is the new pornography.
David takes us through the cycle of our property experience – where prices soar dramatically, become vulnerable and too expensive before falling back to earth. He examines why regardless of age, social class, colour or creed the subject of property is one of our favourite topics of conversation.
Credit liberation has fuelled our property obsession. David argues that in the New Irish Dream your home is no longer merely the place you live – it is an expression of your lifestyle and defines the type of person you are, or indeed would like to be. The programme explores the spending habits of the Decklanders and the HiCo’s.
David travels to Navan to meet with the Decklanders and share their experiences; to Galway, the fastest growing city in Europe, to examine the boom in the sale of old abandoned cottages; and to Tarmonbarry, Co. Roscommon, formerly a village of about 16 houses now with a purpose built marina development – the Porto Banus of Ireland.
David also takes a trip to Bulgaria and introduces us to Robopaddy, who travels the world buying up houses.
Repeats/Online Availability
We hope to have some news about making the series available either online or on DVD quite soon. Stay tuned!
Any chance of putting these programs on the net for people overseas to view?
Ditto, I’m in upstate New York, and it would be great to be able to have a look.
I’m with Paddy, it would be great to be able to watch these programs from overseas. I’m in California in the USA and the points raised seem to have a strong parallel with the overinflated property market here.
Thanks.
Unfortunately I missed the last show.(Living in Spain) and will miss tonights also.Hopefully there will be a DVD. This government (Fianna Fail) have spent decades cheating their generous paymasters (Germany) in the EEU. Enormous development funds have been poured into Ireland in recent decades.How have we repaid them.? We are a small nation of some 5 million people and by undercutting the rest of Europe, have now drawn an inordinate amount of American Industry to the country. The spin off for our politicians is the taxation on the resulting wages bonanza and V.A.T. and a plethora of stealth taxes on… Read more »
The Saab. Have you no taste. Its an Opel Vectra in a dress. A clumpy aul bird that can’t dance but tarts up well. Not fitting with the forward looking image. A Saab in the 80’s was something to have, now it is a bastardised copy of a bad rental car.
How about a podcast for the guys overseas?
Go David- tell it like it is!!! Put the fear of God into these mad spenders!!! No longer need I be ashamed of being a “poor” renter, my total monthly rent being less than half of the average mortgage these poor b******* are forking out. Instead, I’ve taken my surplus monthly cash and invested in a downtown Toronto property, a city I know well- my family live there. Guaranteed rental income that more than covers the mortgage? A chance to buy a second or even third property? An amazing, cosmopolitan and safe city where there are written-in-stone property laws? If… Read more »
in an imaginative way you describe investors in irish property as users of ectasy !! thye are all on this “E” like experience !!! They are all coming up at the same time, the buzz is great !! Im not into drugs myself but I have heard that the come down from an “E” is an awful experience (many say it is the reason why people may turn to heroine, to change the mood of the “come-down”) … so what is going to help with the “come down” for the irish investor, is it investment’s in Bulgaria, Tooorkey and the… Read more »
David!
Just tell us WHEN it’s going to happen. When Bertie and the Gang are going to face the music, so for once, the REAL people, who never got the chance to meet the Celtic Pussycat, can sit back and enjoy the view.
This is not jealousy — this is justice.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, although it will hurt “some”. What can you say; you liked the pleasure — get ready to take the pain.
Thank you for the programme.
Another great episode. But as Simon Cowel might say, “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” – might I ask if David owns or does he rent his home in Dublin? Does he really think Ireland will prove to be the next Japan to crash and burn property wise, or deep down is he really like the rest of us, afraid to sell the same way as we’re afraid not to enter the lotto syndicate in the office, in case we end up the only one not to be in the money?
A bit of a re-hash of the book, and a very good book at that! Its wake up Ireland. Given the vested interests, nobody wants to call it, glad you conveyed this part in eposide II. Expect bust in 2008 – there is lots of available cash (okay credit !) out there so it will be a while before people are unable to fund the cash burn. Irish people tend to find ways to find money and defer the problem. Also the banks will extend, yet again the terms to avoid the run on the property sell off, it does… Read more »
Are these programmes available via web streaming? perhaps post them on youtube and leave a link on your site?
Tara,
You’ll never pick up a bargain in dalkey or similar areas ‘unique’ as they will hold their relative value if there is a re-adjustment in pricing. There has been similar trends in NY and London over the past few years as re-adjustments in the marketplace really only effect lower priced non-unique property such as small apartments and townhouses in average areas.
Trent O’Connell Snr.
II found myself cringing while watching this programme. It was really hard to take….David is perhaps one of the finest independent economic commentators of our time. He is uncompromising in his approach to to some of the most important topics facing our country. My cringing concerns the message and how incredibly uncomfortable is is to hear. I found the programme to be very well produced and presented. The sad fact it is all true. The tsunami of debt that has befallen this country over the last ten to fifteen years has had a dramatic impact on our society. Irish people… Read more »
from John McDermotts post above: this sounds great coming from an Irishman living in Spain “The downside is the dreadful commuting, the unprepared infrastructure, the property explosion, the obscene profiteering by landowners ,builders and developers.The young couples unable to consider conceiving children-both working and enslaved by the costly rat race. Also the fact that foreign voices and faces,and neighbours are more common on the streets,in the housing estates, in shops,restaurants, in our hospitals, nursing homes, etc. etc than irish ones.! When I return to Ireland I am amazed at how rarely I meet an irish supermarket cashier, an Irish waiter,… Read more »
I emigrated from Dublin in 2001 because I firmly believed that residential property was becoming over-priced (in relation to income), poor value for money and would not be a good long term investment. Ha! I have been following David for years, and he appears to have been bearish on Irish residential property for a long time, like myself. People talk about a property crash taking 20% off it’s value. People forget that a 20% drop represents just one years growth out of 11 years of rampant property price increases. The joy of property equity is that it is leveraged to… Read more »
Hi
Just to update you on making the shows available on-line: Each programme has quite a bit of music in it and license or permission needs to be sought for use of the music tracks for download or for DVD release (RTE have an existing agreement for TV broadcast). This is currently being worked on, so we should have some good news on this soon.
Regards
Ronan
Cringe worthy TV. And there are Irish people outside the Greater Dublin Area or Dublin commuter belt or whatever you are calling it these days. Pity you coudn’t have featured it more but I suppose the ugly Dublin sprawl suits your views better.
Cringe worthy comment.
What do you classify as being outside the Dublin commuter belt? Anything west of Connemara, which was part of last night’s episode?
I don’t think you need to be a genius to apply the situations shown to your own particular area. Massive increases in property prices have been country wide.
I was referred to as ‘Low GI Jane’ in work today and have no idea what that means… Please explain.
I watched episde 2 after hearing great things about episode 1 and yes, it was good. A little too close to the bone for comfort maybe…
Somebody needs to show the graphs – i.e. how much euro would it return/cost you if you invest today and 5,10 or 20% reduction happens in 2, 5 or 10 years. I’m sure it’s a radically different answer depending on the timelines.
I am completely undecided now on investing. I live in an area with 1200 non-construction jobs coming online in next 2 years and town forecasted to double in population in 6 years. How can that not yield increasing property prices?
Was there any coincidence in Brent POPE featuring on ‘In Search of (the) POPE’s Children’ last night?
I live in Spain, I regard myself as one of many “wrong way emigrants”. It not a very catchy term I admit, but it will have to do until David comes up with a better one in his next book? I left because I choose not face a three bedroom semi in Lucan and a two hour commute. Now Spain has a speculative property bubble tambien but does much better than Ireland on public services. At least in the capital anyway, there is some effort at grown up planning. Those of you like me who currently live abroad but think… Read more »
Broadband is not allowed. If Ireland had its way we would plug it out.
I would very much like to see this series on dvd or available for download, having watched the first episode with great interest, and subsequently missing the second part. I shudder to think what words of wisdom I have missed out on.
A great episode. Highlights for me were the 7-stage cycle description, and the notion of the building of great national edifices in each country just prior to property meltdown !! And of course another highlight was hearing the word I coined some years back (Dulchie !) being quoted again :-) … actually on that score, the related terms I since created are : Ulchie (Urban culchies i.e. culchies resident in Dublin), and Molchies (Partly derived from Molly Molone) which refers to True Blue Dubs resident in Dublin !
Looking forward to the next episode !!
Thomas
Another wrong way Emmigrant here, left in 2001 to escape the madness.
Looks like it has gotten worse.
How many lifestyle emmigrants are there???
Ireland has always been a country that screws over its young people. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, you couldn’t find a job. Now that job’s are more plentiful, you can’t afford to buy a house or even rent an apartment. I am simply amazed by the high prices for everything in Ireland when I go back to visit. Dublin prices are higher than those of New York City in many areas, but Dublin is no world class city like New York.
Hi, not too stressed out by the programme or the messages; a few years ago Paddy wouldn’t take his hat off meeting the pope, then he told the Catholic church to clear off (having educated him) and now he’s got a few bob in his pocket he thinks he owns the world (beaming having bought some crap apt. in Bulgaria !! while his kidz have no manners and zero sophistication). It’s all frightfully adolescent, growth of a nation, blah, blah. No, the thing that interests me is your episode 2 background music – any chance of the playlist ? In… Read more »
The book on which this documentary alleged to be plagiarised. Here’s the review from Amazon: Remarkably similar to David Brooks’s 2000 study, Bobos in Paradise — The New Upper Class And How They Got There. In fact, a recent article in Ireland on Sunday went so far as to quesion whether McWilliams is the new copycat of the Celtic Tiger! For example: McWilliams writes of a new social class he calls HiCos, Hibernian Cosmopolitans disappointed that the social revolutions they supported in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s led to mass consumerism rather than radical political change. The Bobos — Bourgeois… Read more »
Another Lifestyle emigrant here. We left in 2004 and relocated to London. In 2005 we managed to buy a lovely character full place on a 25yr mortgage,8 miles from the City Centre on the Tube line. It costs the same to service the mortgage as it was to rent it. Bought a good car cheaply, leave for work at 8:30am arrive home at 6:30. £2.50 for a pint in the local, £25 for a good 2 course Thai meal plus 4 beers. I’ve feel I have a better std of living now than if I stayed. And the mad thing… Read more »
Thanks very much for all your comments. The feedback and the ratings for the programmes have been outstanding. I’m greatly honoured that so many are taking time to give their reactions. Indeed the genesis of the next book is springing from many of your observations. Regarding Mr Twomey’s comments. I make no secret of the influence of writers like David Brookes (and other American commentators) on my work. You will see – if you care to look- that the first book in the bibliography of The Pope’s Children is in fact, Bobos in Paradise. It is directly referenced no less… Read more »
Isn’t there an old saying along the lines of “economists have predicted 6 of the last 3 recessions”, or something like that. David you having be banging this particular drum relating to the property market for a very long time. Some may say you indentified the potential problems early on, while others might say, if you say something for long enough it will eventually come through.
Hello David, Enjoyed last programme (II) of the Pope’s Children. also, enjoyed your interview with Ryan Turbidy. However, for me there was a little too much of picture and not enough of facts in the TV programme. I appreciate that you are trying to get to as manny viewers as possible. But for me I would have liked to have seen perhaps a three minute wrap up in studio (power Point) highlighting the key comments etc. made in the programme. ie house prices have gone up 6 times faster than wages and filled by borrowing, private sector debt is 205… Read more »
Another fine piece of work David, It certainly feels as if the economy has reached a turning point and your last programme caught the mood very accurately. Looking forward to episode 3 where you will no doubt tell us how to avoid the impending crash by investing in Cape Verde (it’s very nice at this time of the year I believe – if you can get clean drinking water). Your commentators may also be interested in following related discussions at: thepropertypin.com & globalhousepricecrash.com. askaboutmoney.com used to include some excellent debate on the subject but has inexplicably stamped out any further… Read more »
David’s citing the source of his book in the bibliography is a well known trick of plagiarists who paraphrase vast tracts of an original author’s work, but can then hold up their hands and say “But I quoted him!”.
He may or may not have referred to Brooks (not Brookes, by the way, David) in the small print of the bibliography, but he failed to cite him in the parts of the book where vast tracts are “borrowed” from the original author’s work. Truth told, Brooks wrote the book, Mr Mc Williams adapted it for the Irish market.
Mr. Twomey
Mr. Twomey,
I suggest that if you disagree with mr. mcwilliams you stay away from this website. He answered your point, now go away. David you are doing a good job, I am an economics lecturer in a university in the United states, your work is spot on and pleasure to use in class.
Ian
Ian, like you I am also an academic, except I teach in an Irish university. Having read both books, I would agree with many of the points made by Mr. Twomey. If “The Pope’s Children” was submitted to me a a piece of coursework, and I was aware of the previous book, I would reject “The Pope’s Children” on the grounds of plagiaraism. As an academic, you should be well aware that citation of another author’s work does not give you a licence to paraphrase vast tracts of that work and claim it as your own. The purpose of a… Read more »
Whats quite scary is the number of people over on boards.ie and http://www.askaboutmoney.com looking looking for advice on IMHO quite frightening debts. And these are not badly paid low income workers but people with good jobs (even one mortgage agent!) and money well above publicised average wages. And almost every single one of them finishes their tale of woe with their intention of buying a house in the next year or so – incredible as it may seem, but the only thing that people already heavily in debt seem to want to do is to borrow even more! 2 months… Read more »
Hi…
Finance/ economics student who just ain’t home from the library in time to view the show… sad but true….
any chance of this show goin to be available online…
I missed the shows, i seen part of number 3. I found it informative and very interesting especially how mr McWilliams hints at such a socio-economic change in Germany and its multiplied effects in Ireland. Since the show last night, im reconsidering property here and taking German lessons. Danke
I feel that David’s work is commendable – but it must be seen as being merely an opinion. You need to read it, understand it, and in the context of all other “expert” opinion on the economy that’s out there, make up your own mind. I too am a “wrong way emigrant” or whatever the phrase du jour is, having moved here to Spain to start a business that proved to be impossible to fund with banks at home. They simply want the ‘easy money’ option of property secured loans. And looking at BOI results, it’s obviously a winning formula.… Read more »
@ John McDermott – John, it’s a bit much for a foreigner like yourself living in Spain to be complaining about immigration to Ireland. You’re an immigrant yourself John, in case you hadn’t noticed – Spain isn’t an Irish province (yet)!
We left too before insanity kicked in properly.
“Well, the higher the flight the greater the fall.”
Ooooooochhhhhhh,I can hear it already.
I missed this show and am not interested in buying DVD. I’m not paying twice to see a series produced by RTE with my license fee money. So do RTE have any plans to repeat the series in the Spring/Summer?
Hi David,
I absolutely loved “In search of the Popes children” Would watch it over and over again. I thought it was very tastefully done. Is there anywhere I can get a list of the music/songs used in the series as all the music was fab? Keep up the good work and hope to see you on tv very soon.