One More Thing

Here’s a green shoot for you. Wealthy Irish folk are once again buying boats. Not to escape the misery of the downturn that has enveloped the island for what seems like forever, but to have fun.

MGM Boats is one of the premier yacht and boat dealers in the country. I had a chat during the week with its co-founder, Martin Salmon (always my favourite name for someone who works in the marine industry). According to Salmon, Irish buyers started "drifting" back in to the market earlier this year.

“It kicked in before the good weather, around April. We started getting phone calls from Irish telephone numbers again, Irish accents,” said Salmon, who owns the company with his brother Gerry.

MGM was selling about 120 boats a year at the height of the boom, mainly in the Irish market. Its models included Aquador and Sunseeker, the boat brand so beloved of James Bond.

When the economy fell off a cliff in 2009, Salmon left the boats behind “and got on some airplanes” to drum up business around Europe. MGM has now transformed itself into a broker, as opposed to a dealer. “We are now estate agents for boats,” explained Salmon.

The company has about 300 boats on its books at the moment, about half of them Irish-owned. “We expect to get that up to about 350 by year end,” he said.

In recent weeks, it opened up two more brokerages in Cala D'Or on the Spanish island of Majorca, and Vilamoura in Portugal. "A lot of boats are coming on to the market there. There is some despair," said Salmon. We know how they feel.

Lombard Ireland no longer provides finance in the Irish market for boats, but Salmon says European banks will lend to Irish buyers.

Thank goodness for that. We were beginning to get a little (sea) sick of all this doom and gloom.