There is a Porsche club in Ireland now, writes Vincent Browne. Membership has doubled in the last two years.
On the Porsche Club Ireland website there is a cheery message from the current president, David Whelan. He writes: "Our club members are an eclectic lot whose interests range from concours events, to factory tours, visits to stately homes, fun days, track days, weekend and day drives and there are even some of us who race and rally our Porsches."
There are 20 to 30 model 911 Porsches around, ranging in price from €175,000 to €250,000. New 911 turbo Porsches retail for about €250,000.
In the first half of 2007, 5,700 BMWs were registered in Ireland. Since 2000, Jaguar has increased its market share by one-third. Mercedes has increased its market share by a half. There are more Mercedes in Ireland per capita than there are in Germany.
There are between 40 to 50 private jets based in Ireland - presumably these do not include the private jets owned by tax exiles. There are 140 registered helicopters (the great polluters of the next generation). Helicopter flying lessons are becoming popular, costing more than €20,000. The Irish Marine Institute believes there are about 25,000 leisure boats, with boat sales running at about €50 million a year, up from about €30 million two years ago.
Holidays in the Middle East and Far East are also booming. Middle East holidays nowadays have little to do with the Holy Land; they have to do with one of the most dreary, lifeless, uninteresting, bleakest locations on the globe, Dubai. Great weather, wall-to-wall sunshine and shopping. Non-stop shopping. Designer malls. Duty free. The latest designer fashions. A gigantic Dundrum shopping centre on the Persian Gulf.
The growth in Irish holiday nights (to use the industry jargon) in holidays in Asia and the Middle East has averaged 7 per cent per annum since 2000. Executive backpacking is the new vogue vacation. Although not on $20 a day.
Many Irish people are also engaging in the arts world, not, apparently, because aesthetic appreciation has blossomed here but because this is an arena of fabulously rich capital gains.
The global market is now estimated to be worth about €45 billion. Fine wines is another arena rich in riches and the Irish are wallowing in it (can one wallow in wine?).
This uplifting information comes from a report: The Emerald Isle, The Wealth of Modern Irelandjust published by the National Irish Bank (Beverley Flynn's former bank). It reported that aggregate household wealth doubled in five years and was now in excess of €1 trillion, which according to Wikipedia is one million million (€1,000,000,000,000).
Another bank, Bank of Ireland Private Banking Limited, published a similar report last year, The Wealth of the Nation. It disclosed net wealth per head increased from €148,000 to €196,000 from 2004 to 2006. It stated the top 1 per cent of the population held 20 per cent of the wealth, and the top 2 per cent held 30 per cent of the wealth, with the top 5 per cent holding 40 per cent of the wealth, leaving the remaining 60 per cent of the wealth to be shared among 95 per cent of the population.
But if the value of housing were left out, then the top 1 per cent held over a third of all wealth (34 per cent). It said 3,000 millionaires were created in 2006 and that there were 33,000 millionaires in the country in 2007. Of these 30,000 had wealth of up to €5 million. Nearly 3,000 had wealth of between €5 million and €30 million and 330 had wealth in excess of €30 million.
Meanwhile, according to a report published by the Central Statistics Office last November ( EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions), almost 7 per cent of the population are living in consistent poverty, that is almost 300,000 people living in consistent poverty that is, living on incomes of less than the equivalent of about €11,000 for a single person and being unable to afford two pairs of strong shoes, or unable to afford a meal with meat or chicken or fish every second day, or unable to afford a waterproof coat.
Aside from that, 17 per cent are at risk of poverty (over 700,000 people), that is, living on equivalent incomes of less than 60 per cent of the average. That is about €11,000 for a single person or €27,000 for a household of two adults and two children.
What possible justification is there for such enormous disparities of wealth and lifestyles? Do those who own Porsches, Mercedes, Jaguars, private jets, helicopters, who holiday in Dubai, drink wine at €2,000 a bottle, really deserve that much more than those who live in consistent poverty? Is it really the case that the system would come crashing down if there were a little more equity in how our wealth and income were distributed?
Or is it enough to respond "tough", life was not meant to be fair? But was life meant to be unfair and, if so, meant by whom?