The Debt Set

In the UK , according to Credit Action, the debtors' charity, people go bankrupt at the rate of one every 3.69 minutes. A property is repossessed in the UK every 11.4 minutes.

The Citizens Advice Bureau handle an estimated 9,500 new debt problems every day.

16,348 individual bankruptcy petitions were made in the first three months of this year, along with 2,177 company winding-up petitions due to financial difficulty.

In Ireland, almost 30,000 people have failed to make a mortgage repayment for three months, according to recent Financial Regulator figures. Another 35,000 people have agreed to have their mortgage debt rescheduled by opting to pay only the interest on the mortgage, by arranging a temporary payment holiday or by extending the term of the home loan. 170,000 people are struggling with negative equity. In Ireland , 300,000 homes lie empty

Ireland has the fourth highest unemployment in the EU (13.4%), with 432,500 people on the dole; one in three of the working population under 30 is unemployed. In this land of mass unemployment, workers are struggling to protect their jobs. An employee of Quinn Insurance, a boom-time success story recently taken into administration, is too scared to give his name because he has joined a union. He has been told his company is looking for 900 redundancies, more than a third of its workforce. "My job is at risk, and I feel I've been intimidated over not joining a union. It's very frustrating. I'd expect a lot more anger right now." He has tried to encourage his depressed, stoical peers to join the union, but can't get the numbers. "Some are scared, and others think they can't do anything," he says.

David Begg, leader of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has become a vocal critic of the government in recent months explained "The access and influence we had isn't there any more. The reason it collapsed is because the government wouldn't retain the terms of 22 years of social partnership, which was abandoned by government and employers at the first sign of trouble."


Christy Moore, who are turning to the courts in an attempt to get their home back. Christy worked on building sites during the construction boom, but is now on social welfare. Two of their three children are unemployed; the third has just found work on a 12-week contract. Christy is left battling with the shame of losing his home:
"You should be strong but you feel so low – just finish me off, shoot me, put a bullet in my head," he says. "And all the time you hear you have to tighten your belts, which is an insult to people's intelligence. It's fear – that's why people aren't rising up. But we mustn't fear the corrupt politicians and bankers and developers, because that's what they want."

Fintan O'Toole , author of "Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger" , writes, the question is whether the Irish "have enough constructive anger to kick away a system that has failed them and make a new one for themselves".

SOYMB wonders much the same.