Ireland the 1980s

Vinculus

First time I watched Blade Runner was on a 14 inch black and white portable TV and it blew my mind.
I was eleven.

storker

donegaLroad wrote: »

they needed them to take all the immigrants to the States

I remember being on one for the trip back to London after Christmas. I thought at first I'd got on the wrong plane...

Grandeeod

Deleted User wrote: »

But...there was massive unemployment. And emigration. The stats are all there. I don't think anecdotal evidence about estates being built changes that, and I don't remember too much going up in Cork at all.

We held a concert to address the unemployment crisis. Cactus World News played. It don't get much worse than that.

Cactus World News were ****ing great! End of!

Grandeeod

In relation to buying houses in the 80s....First time buyers grant was introduced with new builds to support it. It had to be a new build to qualify for the grant. See the trend??

Even into the 90s, you could buy a new house with a £100 (old money:D) deposit plus the first time buyers grant and mortgage approval. Loads did it and many were in very basic jobs. Look where it lead us to.

allthedoyles

Other than RTE1 and RTE2 we used to be able to get HTV Wales on an outdoor aerial .
That was it just three tv stations

black & white

Left school in 79 and worked all through the 80's except for most of 86. It was a tough time for many people but there was usually work in and around Shannon industrial estate so the effect wasn't as bad. I remember those years as being good, I bought my first house for 22k, a 2 bed starter bungalow (a dormer without the upstairs done so you did it as you got the money) on a decent site. Ok, the telly was ****e but it's mostly that now so ....... The house would be worth about 180k now.

Big Nasty

The biggest difference between the 80s recession and our most recent one was nobody had anything to begin with. In the late 00s we had cars and mortgages, credit card bills and banks throwing money like confetti. Therefore when the recession hit you didn't just have nothing, you had nothing minus €350k.

uch

MadYaker wrote: »

Unemployment may have been 20% in the nation but I'd say it was a lot lower in Dublin. I'm not arsed looking up figures but I'd guess it was probably under 10%?

Nope it was pretty shíte up here too, couldn't get a job, I was out of work for about 3 years and took a pox of a job in a warehouse just to have a few bob for to be going meeting the mots, in the estate I lived in there was about 40% unemployment, and sadly Heroin became your mate, cheap as fuk and forget your worries, I suppose most urban estates were the same, of the twelve or so lads I grew up with, 5 are dead from drug abuse and 4 are still addicts, (how they are still alive is beyond me), I was the lucky one, but it took me 30 years to become clean, it was a very harsh time but yet I still look back at the likes of good neighbours and friendly people everywhere, who like us didn't have a pot to piss in but just got on with things. What I miss today is nobody says hello to you when you pass them anymore

black & white

Big Nasty wrote: »

The biggest difference between the 80s recession and our most recent one was nobody had anything to begin with. In the late 00s we had cars and mortgages, credit card bills and banks throwing money like confetti. Therefore when the recession hit you didn't just have nothing, you had nothing minus €350k.

Agreed, if I lost my job (which I did a few months after buying the house) the mortgage was the only bill to worry about. My car was a 7 year old Escort which I had bought for cash the year before, no credit card, no multichannel so not too many money worries thankfully

eman66

The mince money queue was out the door, down the steps and out the gate. Then, somewhere between the counter and the street, it magically turned into pints-at-11am-on-a-Thursday-morning money.

road_high

Was only a chiseler back in the 80s bit from what I remember of that era people had a hell of a lot less (no one had BMWs for example) but things just seemed a lot more easy going and less pressured.

Harvey Normal

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

Maybe some of the 80% who weren't unemployed.

Apparantly everybody who was employed could buy a house. House ownership reached 80% by 1991.

Fianna Fowl

The '80's, house robbed regularly, fathers car robbed regularly just for a joy ride and left on the side of the road, being beaten up and robbed of my bicycle by an adult when 10 years old, kids walking around sniffing bags of glue, getting robbed of the money your mother gave you to go to the shops to buy milk, kids asking for a fag as a precursor to starting a fight, "what you lookin at?, 47 kids in my primary school class - more like crowd control than education.

Much simpler times. The change that occurred in Dublin between say '87 and '95 was phenomenal.

Dublin is a fantastic place to live now, a city I love living in, however, in the '80's it was a violent place where you regularly struggled to see 50 yards through the smog but at least we got some great snowfalls!

Harvey Normal

Grandeeod wrote: »

In relation to buying houses in the 80s....First time buyers grant was introduced with new builds to support it. It had to be a new build to qualify for the grant. See the trend??

Even into the 90s, you could buy a new house with a £100 (old money:D) deposit plus the first time buyers grant and mortgage approval. Loads did it and many were in very basic jobs. Look where it lead us to.

It was fine then because there was no credit bubble. Tight monetary policy and grants seems to work.

nullzero

We had a much less sophisticated pallet back then. Food was functional and for the most part bland, far from the fiesta of world cuisines you can choose from in today's supermarkets.

There was a lot of smoggy days in winter too, smokeless coal was introduced in the early nineties and that became a thing of the past reasonably quickly.

I was a small kid then, I do remember some class mates at school having "trendy" hair do's (think spikes on top and long at the back type mullets and the dreaded rats tail).

Mass was really busy as well, the church was so busy round our way there were overflow masses on Sunday mornings in the school hall, almost alien in today's essentially secular Ireland.

Annasopra

Deleted User wrote: »

But...there was massive unemployment. And emigration. The stats are all there. I don't think anecdotal evidence about estates being built changes that, and I don't remember too much going up in Cork at all.

We held a concert to address the unemployment crisis. Cactus World News played. It don't get much worse than that.

I'm fairly sure there was a large number of council houses built in the 80s.

Dohnjoe

mariaalice wrote: »

Ireland in the 1980s has the reputation of being a basket case unemployment 20% etc, however if you looked from one side of Dublin to the other including all the suburbs, a huge amount of housing was built in the 1980s massive housing estates in all the suburbs, its the same in Limerick not sure about Cork or Galway but probably the same so who was buying all the housing if there was such massive unemployment.

In an era of massive unemployment people were able to buy houses and now in an era of lowering unemployment the same subset of people can not afford a house.

Variety of reasons house prices have increased relative to wage

More dual income families now
Its an era of employment, more people have more money, hence they can spend more - pushing the price up
Houses are built to a higher quality, better materials, etc, further increasing price
Land/property is an increasingly scarce resource so a house isn't just a house now, it's an investment

We all complain about house prices, and compared to the past they are relatively higher - but ultimately, it's a market price that is set by you, me, our family, friends, etc

Dohnjoe

nullzero wrote: »

We had a much less sophisticated pallet back then. Food was functional and for the most part bland, far from the fiesta of world cuisines you can choose from in today's supermarkets.

There was a lot of smoggy days in winter too, smokeless coal was introduced in the early nineties and that became a thing of the past reasonably quickly.

I was a small kid then, I do remember some class mates at school having "trendy" hair do's (think spikes on top and long at the back type mullets and the dreaded rats tail).

Mass was really busy as well, the church was so busy round our way there were overflow masses on Sunday mornings in the school hall, almost alien in today's essentially secular Ireland.

Me and most of my friends had second hand clothes, seemed the norm, cars were bangers and ancient

Low quality goods were common - nothing near the variety, choice and quality today

No cheap flights, holidays in Ire, the UK or maybe France in a tent if lucky

It was great fun, but economically it was **** compared to today

Sam Kade

road_high wrote: »

Was only a chiseler back in the 80s bit from what I remember of that era people had a hell of a lot less (no one had BMWs for example) but things just seemed a lot more easy going and less pressured.

Might have something to do with the fact that BMW's were also sh1t back then

iguana

mariaalice wrote: »

Well maybe not exactly the same subset but in general two working adults.

Families with two employed adults were extremely unusual in the 80s (unless the second person was an adult child still living at home). And therein lies part of the reason for house-price rises. Try reading Elizabeth Warren's Two Income Trap. Families on average are a lot less well off in terms of housing and ability to save than they were in the 80s. Obviously most of her work is based on American families where the economy was in much better shape in the 80s than ours, but it was definitely possible for a family on one low wage to buy a good home in a nice, central area, while continuing to save a little. Something that is close to impossible now.

Galwayguy35

Good music, better summers and nearly everyone in school wearing an army jacket.

The_Captain

My dad always complains that when he bought our house, he could have got one on the coast in Malahide for £500 more, but decided to spend the money on furniture in the front room instead.

Fast forward 30 years and there was a €400,000 price difference between the two houses

Harvey Normal

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Variety of reasons house prices have increased relative to wage

More dual income families now
Its an era of employment, more people have more money, hence they can spend more - pushing the price up
Houses are built to a higher quality, better materials, etc, further increasing price
Land/property is an increasingly scarce resource so a house isn't just a house now, it's an investment

We all complain about house prices, and compared to the past they are relatively higher - but ultimately, it's a market price that is set by you, me, our family, friends, etc

It's largely set by government policy actually. If they wanted to increase supply they could.

The only valid argument you have is that there are more dual income houses now, everything else isn't relevant. (Maybe better materials but that wasn't true until recently).

Sam Kade

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Me and most of my friends had second hand clothes, seemed the norm, cars were bangers and ancient

Low quality goods were common - nothing near the variety, choice and quality today

No cheap flights, holidays in Ire, the UK or maybe France in a tent if lucky

It was great fun, but economically it was **** compared to today

You could go out with £20 in your pocket get drunk and do the same the next night with the change of the twenty pounds. Pubs were packed every weekend, going by this thread you'd think the 80's were a time of poverty and destitution in Ireland.

black & white

And the cheap butter.... Housewives elbowing each other out of the way for EU butter that for some reason was sold off for a fraction of the normal price. " Mammy, what's is my sandwich today ?" " Butter son"

Grandeeod

Grandeeod wrote: »

In relation to buying houses in the 80s....First time buyers grant was introduced with new builds to support it. It had to be a new build to qualify for the grant. See the trend??

Even into the 90s, you could buy a new house with a £100 (old money:D) deposit plus the first time buyers grant and mortgage approval. Loads did it and many were in very basic jobs. Look where it lead us to.

I know you have to stop the rif raf buying houses :P

I had forgotten about this until now, my first husband pressured someone who work on the factory floor in the place where he worked, to buy a house as this person had grown up in an orphanage and then lived in a horrendous bed sit, now the man was able to do this on a very basic wage from a factory, today in the same area the cheapest house would be around 400k!

As for revisionism it wasn't all council house that was built in the 1980s. There was huge amount of development of private housing as well.

topper75

5rtytry56 wrote: »

Brush was Gay Burns's omnipresent "special guest" on the Late Late Show in the 1980s.

...and Lenny Henry, Billy Connolly, Spike Milligan, and Peter Ustinov would pass by like bi-annual comets. Gauran-****ing-teed like.

Housing situation comparisons are futile. So apples and oranges.

Yes the interest would be brutal, but the low price and low deposit percentages meant that young first timers could at least hope to get started if they had any kind of steady work.

Exiled1

Until 1986 county councils and borough councils could CPO land at agricultural rates plus 25%. They then divvied it out to builders for development. The councils also provided SDA (small development authority?) loans. I bought a house in 1980 for £17000 with a £12000 loan from the council, £4000 from the credit union and the rest saved. Interest rates were about 10% at the time. You were screwed for about three years and then were ok. Wages were rising annually at quite a rate.
Garret Fitzgerald and the great socialist Ruairi Quinn stopped the councils buying the land.
Within days the vultures swooped, Burke, Lawlor, Dunlop and Redmond took over Dublin and their counterparts took care of the rest of the country.
That 1986 decision F****d housing purchase in this country.
By the way Councils and State can still CPO land for purchase but they don't do so.....I wonder why????

5rtytry56

donegaLroad wrote: »

they needed them to take all the immigrants to the States

Bang on. Remember the TODAY TONIGHT program starting with a close - up of some of these people onboard a 747 accompanied by the dour intonation from the presenter about the degree of emigration. He passed away a year or two ago - forget his name

ohnonotgmail

topper75 wrote: »

...and Lenny Henry, Billy Connolly, Spike Milligan, and Peter Ustinov would pass by like bi-annual comets. Gauran-****ing-teed like.

Housing situation comparisons are futile. So apples and oranges.

Yes the interest would be brutal, but the low price and low deposit percentages meant that young first timers could at least hope to get started if they had any kind of steady work.

the difference is that Billy Connolly, Spike Milligan, and Peter Ustinov were always interesting guests.

Etc

80's were great for me. Went through Secondary school, got to collage and actually got a Job.........in Ireland !

I also learned that blond highlights and a mustache wasn't a look for me to carry into the 90's.

50p for a bag of chips and £1:45 for a pint of Smithwicks too.....

ohnonotgmail

Exiled1 wrote: »

Until 1986 county councils and borough councils could CPO land at agricultural rates plus 25%. They then divvied it out to builders for development. The councils also provided SDA (small development authority?) loans. I bought a house in 1980 for £17000 with a £12000 loan from the council, £4000 from the credit union and the rest saved. Interest rates were about 10% at the time. You were screwed for about three years and then were ok. Wages were rising annually at quite a rate.
Garret Fitzgerald and the great socialist Ruairi Quinn stopped the councils buying the land.
Within days the vultures swooped, Burke, Lawlor, Dunlop and Redmond took over Dublin and their counterparts took care of the rest of the country.
That 1986 decision F****d housing purchase in this country.
By the way Councils and State can still CPO land for purchase but they don't do so.....I wonder why????

because they have to pay the market value of the land.

Exiled1

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

because they have to pay the market value of the land.

Market value at agriculture price or developer price?

ohnonotgmail

Exiled1 wrote: »

Market value at agriculture price or developer price?

market value.

Harvey Normal

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

market value.

Market value depends on zoning.

ToddyDoody

It was acceptable in the 80s.

ClovenHoof

ToddyDoody wrote: »

It was acceptable in the 80s.

Like moving the tracking wheel on the VCR and masturbating to The Bitch at the same time.

ToddyDoody

ClovenHoof wrote: »

Like moving the tracking wheel on the VCR and masturbating to The Bitch at the same time.

It was acceptable at the time.

jmayo

mariaalice wrote: »

Ireland in the 1980s has the reputation of being a basket case unemployment 20% etc, however if you looked from one side of Dublin to the other including all the suburbs, a huge amount of housing was built in the 1980s massive housing estates in all the suburbs, its the same in Limerick not sure about Cork or Galway but probably the same so who was buying all the housing if there was such massive unemployment.

In an era of massive unemployment people were able to buy houses and now in an era of lowering unemployment the same subset of people can not afford a house.

House prices relative to income (single income at that) had not skyrocketed back then.
A hosue was not 10 times annual salary and single salaries could afford to buy property.
Granted mortgage interest rates were crazy, but people had many less monthly bills.
Oh and they made do with old stuff, second hand stuff, etc until they could actually afford it.

As for claiming the eighties were not that bad.
Yes they were and they weren't.

Growing up in rural West of Ireland most people in your class ended up emigrating to UK and some off to the states.
There was no one off to Australia.
Hell even if you did go to college, which really only took off in the 80s, meant you probably emigrated at the end.

The only one I knew with a BMW was a local solicitor and the Mercs were owned by business men or bank manager.
Everyone else made do with Toyotas because they were ultra reliable, even if they rusted to shyte or Fords, Opels, VWs, Nissans.
There were shag all new cars, bar the cra*heaps from mother Russia.

Another example was in the farming community.
The only new tractors bought were either cheaper Eastern European Zetors / Ursus or old common make stuff.
Only contractors bought new "proper" tractors.
Even then they weren't hundred horsepower plus expensive machines.
Farmers didn't have jeeps, but VW jettas to pull the car trailers.

There was one TV, often rented, and even then it might have been Black and white.
There were no satellite services, no cable, no broadband, no mobiles and very few landline phones which meant people had less monthly bills.

Shag all people went on foreign holidays and even flying off the bloody island to UK was astronomically expensive thanks to the state owned union riddled employee centred Aer Lingus.
We owe Ryan Air a lot really, yes I know deregulation was part of it.

There was continous trouble in the north and always undercurrent that something bad might happen down here.
I remember those kidnappings and special branch staking out the homes of republicans.

Saying all that we had crack because we probably didn't know any better.
We had MTV USA on Sunday afternoons where we all became fans of Bryan Adams, Bruce, etc.
We wore kangaroo boots and stone washed jeans because they were cool, we had German army parkas to keep out the cold and the rain, some had PLO scarfs, some wore docs, some people had mullets, some wore white socks, black slip on shoes and black speckled pants.
Some of us used to roll our jacket sleeves up and pretend that the old Opel Kadett was indeed a Ferrari.
We didn't worry about overcrowding cars going to discos, hell even having the driver three sheets to the wind on the way home.

Maybe we were innocent, but feck it we did have some fun.

Nothing since has matched the excitement of Dad going to bed early, as he did, Mam going to some wives night out like Scór or some local play...

...left alone with the tv...

...and knowing there was a Bond or cineclub film starting at 10 on RTE 2 with the hope of just a fleeting glimpse...

HensVassal

jmayo wrote: »

House prices relative to income (single income at that) had not skyrocketed back then.
A hosue was not 10 times annual salary and single salaries could afford to buy property.
Granted mortgage interest rates were crazy, but people had many less monthly bills.
Oh and they made do with old stuff, second hand stuff, etc until they could actually afford it.

As for claiming the eighties were not that bad.
Yes they were and they weren't.

Growing up in rural West of Ireland most people in your class ended up emigrating to UK and some off to the states.
There was no one off to Australia.
Hell even if you did go to college, which really only took off in the 80s, meant you probably emigrated at the end.

The only one I knew with a BMW was a local solicitor and the Mercs were owned by business men or bank manager.
Everyone else made do with Toyotas because they were ultra reliable, even if they rusted to shyte or Fords, Opels, VWs, Nissans.
There were shag all new cars, bar the cra*heaps from mother Russia.

Another example was in the farming community.
The only new tractors bought were either cheaper Eastern European Zetors / Ursus or old common make stuff.
Only contractors bought new "proper" tractors.
Even then they weren't hundred horsepower plus expensive machines.
Farmers didn't have jeeps, but VW jettas to pull the car trailers.

There was one TV, often rented, and even then it might have been Black and white.
There were no satellite services, no cable, no broadband, no mobiles and very few landline phones which meant people had less monthly bills.

Shag all people went on foreign holidays and even flying off the bloody island to UK was astronomically expensive thanks to the state owned union riddled employee centred Aer Lingus.
We owe Ryan Air a lot really, yes I know deregulation was part of it.

There was continous trouble in the north and always undercurrent that something bad might happen down here.
I remember those kidnappings and special branch staking out the homes of republicans.

Saying all that we had crack because we probably didn't know any better.
We had MTV USA on Sunday afternoons where we all became fans of Bryan Adams, Bruce, etc.
We wore kangaroo boots and stone washed jeans because they were cool, we had German army parkas to keep out the cold and the rain, some had PLO scarfs, some wore docs, some people had mullets, some wore white socks, black slip on shoes and black speckled pants.
Some of us used to roll our jacket sleeves up and pretend that the old Opel Kadett was indeed a Ferrari.
We didn't worry about overcrowding cars going to discos, hell even having the driver three sheets to the wind on the way home.

Maybe we were innocent, but feck it we did have some fun.

Adidas Rom, Harrington jackets, Madness, The Jam, Ultravox, 1.99 for a "single" (45 rpm vinyl), 10p for a game of Asteroids/Space Invaders/Defender, Rah-rah skirts and pixie boots on the girls and you were a flash bastard if you had a Ford Sierra or a renegade flash bastard if you had a Fiat Mirefiori.

dd972

Proper Orange and Black trains with General Motors Loco's not those bland yokes we've got now.

ArnoldJRimmer

I was a kid in the 80's and remember a lot of houses and estates being built in Donegal at the time. Letterkenny expanded in a big way and got a new exotic looking shopping center and all.

I see the biggest difference as the budgeting that took place back then was completely different to now. There simply wasn't any waste, be it food, clothing, cars. We got the odd chipper, but apart from that, we very very rarely ate out. A lot of the clothes were hand me downs. A lot less toys too

So aside from the reasons already mentioned in the thread, I think people were a lot more careful with money and better at saving.

JupiterKid

Things were hard back in the 80s. I was very lucky to have had a privilidged upbringing where my Dad worked bloody hard and both parents made sacrifices so that I and my sisters didn't have to want for much but even then at times things were tight. My sisters and I went on to 3rd level education but my sisters had to emigrate as the jobs/careers they sought simply weren't available here.

Sh*t roads, sh*t public services, very expensive groceries and much less in the way of entertainment and communications. But as kids we still had great fun. Being allowed to play outdoors for all day, making up our own entertainment, getting hand me down clothes (does that happen anymore?) some of which was yuck, some of which was cool.

We had more time with our parents (especially our mums) as people lucky enough to have jobs worked to live, not lived to work and far fewer women worked back then. Cartoons on TV were much better - shows like Battle Of The Planets, Ulysses 31, Cities Of Gold, Scooby Doo, Captain Caveman lol

Housing was more affordable as the population was much lower (3.5 million in 1986) and emigration kept housing demand down. Houses, apts and back gardens were bigger than today but people had less stuff crammed into them. Grannies had their "parlours" or good rooms in their houses.
I remember when the first non-white (Indian) family moved onto our street and it was a big deal. We were all really decent to them - I think the father was a doctor. Very little in the way of racial diversity.

No divorce, contraception barely legal, homosexuality illegal but this didnt bother us as kids. Music was pretty good - Top Of The Pops and MTV by the end of the decade. Everybody still went to church/mass and politicians feared the hierarchy.

All in all, the 80s were a mixed bag and the standard of living is undoubtedly better today but perhaps quality of life was better back then - well, for a lot of us. It was not a bad time to be a young child.

Electric Sheep

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

I was a kid in the 80's and remember a lot of houses and estates being built in Donegal at the time. Letterkenny expanded in a big way and got a new exotic looking shopping center and all.

I see the biggest difference as the budgeting that took place back then was completely different to now. There simply wasn't any waste, be it food, clothing, cars. We got the odd chipper, but apart from that, we very very rarely ate out. A lot of the clothes were hand me downs. A lot less toys too

So aside from the reasons already mentioned in the thread, I think people were a lot more careful with money and better at saving.

The thing was, at least in rural areas, everyone was in the same boat - everyone wore hand me downs, nobody ate out, nobody's family had a fancy car or two cars, nobody's mother worked because there were very few jobs and even fewer that would pay enough to cover the unavailable childcare. We didn't feel poor because there were very few better off with which to compare ourselves.

andekwarhola

Deleted User wrote: »

Nothing since has matched the excitement of Dad going to bed early, as he did, Mam going to some wives night out like Scór or some local play...

...left alone with the tv...

...and knowing there was a Bond or cineclub film starting at 10 on RTE 2 with the hope of just a fleeting glimpse...

Channel 4 foreign films. As close to a dead cert as you got back then.

learn_more

Deleted User wrote: »

Nothing since has matched the excitement of Dad going to bed early, as he did, Mam going to some wives night out like Scór or some local play...

...left alone with the tv...

...and knowing there was a Bond or cineclub film starting at 10 on RTE 2 with the hope of just a fleeting glimpse...

Nothing since has has matched the excitement of Dad being in the pub till all hours when there was no taxis.

My mum knew the inevitable phone call would come ( thankfully not too late back in those days) late at night to come in to town and collect him. My mum couldn't leave us in the house by ourselves in case we set the house on fire so we went into town very late. I recall one time the roads had forzen over and the car slipped left and right. Good fun for a 8 yo but not for my mum.

My dad would then drive home, as their was no cops around. Oh joyful memories.

JupiterKid

You have to remember that Ireland was one of the poorest, least developed countries in Western Europe in the 1980s. We were barely in the 1st world. White goods (washing machines, kitchen appliances, cookers etc) were much more expensive relative to incomes compared to today. Groceries and clothes were much more expensive relative to incomes compared to today. So people had less of these goods and they lasted longer. Nowadays, if an appliance breaks down people often replace them with new ones. Back in the 80s people got them repaired.

Infrastructure was much less developed - telecommunications were pretty poor and our roads were a complete disgrace. Cars tended to be older and in much worse condition than today.

House building went through a huge boom in the 1970s - it peaked around 1974 and there was another house building peak in 1982. Local authorities still built houses on a large scale and there were numerous schemes to enable low income households to purchase a dwelling. The tenant purchase scheme for instance and lower interest rate local authority loans. Believe it or not, many households bought private houses with loans given out by local authorities instead of banks.

People also didnt have access to credit like today. Very few credit cards, no overdrafts, no loans. People just scrimped and saved what little they had.

Unions ruled the country - that's why public services were so poor and air travel was prohibitively expensive. Foreign holidays and eating out were rare luxuries really only available to the middle class. A middle class which was much smaller than today.

If you go back two or three generations in most Irish families there is no money. Rich grandparents with trust funds to donate just don't exist in Ireland compared to the UK or continental Europe.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Things were good for my father in the late 80s. He established himself after his father's death and continued on our family business.

He also decided to breed during this time, this is where I came out of. My Dad is a businessman and I'm proud of him for making his bones during a recession.

My only hope is that I can be half the man that he was and a good a role model to my son.