How to run a household on less than €4,000 a week

Sunday Tribune, 29 March

It was one of the great comic performances of the Celtic Tiger era. Pee Flynn on The Late Late Show, grinning like he had a coathanger in his gob after telling the audience how he ran three households on £100,000 a year. Poor out-of-touch Pee, the poster boy for gombeen politics. Who else would claim to spend so much on housekeeping?
Another Fianna Fáil man, perhaps?
Zip forward 10 years and Offaly councillor Ger Killally is bemoaning the high cost of housekeeping. Killally, a former running mate of Brian Cowen, sobbed as he told a judge he needs €4,000 a week to meet household expenses. FOUR GRAND A WEEK. That's €192,000 a year – six times the average industrial wage.
Councillor/auctioneer Killally, who has admitted he made secret profits from land deals and resigned his party's whip, was ordered by the Commercial Court not to reduce his assets below €8m in February. Last Tuesday, he pleaded to have those assets unfrozen to make ends meet. He wept as he detailed his outgoings, which included problems with his underfloor heating and the expense of raising two small children, with another on the way. He was "in between" cars, as his 2008 Audi SUV had been damaged in a road accident. He can't afford to repair it. Oh, and his mobile phone has been cut off.
Killally is actually a victim of the Celtic Tiger. If it wasn't for the boom, he wouldn't be living in a nine-bedroom castellated monster-mansion with all those bills to pay. He deserves our sympathy. Imagine having to struggle with a €4,000-a-week housekeeping bill. There aren't many of us who have faced that kind of challenge. With the exception of Fiona Nagle, of course.
Remember Fiona? She's the socialite wife of Breifne O'Brien, the Dublin tycoon who has been ordered to pay €16m to investors in his alleged 'pyramid scheme'.
Fiona is a former receptionist and party organiser who told Image magazine in 2006 that she never "sticks to one designer". A few Chanel pieces "always rise to the top of the pile", she said, adding that Roland Mouret makes her "feel like a woman". Her "diamond butterfly ring from Van Cleef & Arpels goes with jeans or evening wear". Well it would, wouldn't it?
In January, Nagle – who is not accused of any wrongdoing – also pleaded with a judge to unfreeze the family's assets. She said she needed money to cover her household expenses. Coincidentally, like Killally, she also needed €4,000 a week to pay her bills. Diamond polish obviously isn't cheap (not that I'd know).
Nagle must really be short of a few bob as, last month, a judge had to instruct gardaí to bring her to court for non-payment of parking fines. The warrant was withdrawn and she has since ponied up. Still, at least she had a car to park illegally, unlike poor Ger Killally.
A week later, Nagle pleaded with the media to respect her privacy. There's an irony in that: a PR person asking the press to stay away. It was not as ironic, however, as hearing a Fianna Fáil man blaming the crash for his ruination. It was Fianna Fáil, after all, that sowed the seeds of it with the property boom, from which he profited. It was his former running mate that was at the financial helm when everything went belly-up.
It was Fianna Fáil that refinanced the banks and then let an old-age pensioner give it two fingers over a €1m bonus. Only a hard-necked Tiger stalwart like Michael Fingleton could believe he deserves that and a €28m pension. Is he mad? He's in his 70s – it's not like he has a lot of time left to spend it all. Does he have housekeeping bills like Killally and Nagle? Does his house cost €4,000 a week to run?
You really have to marvel at how out of touch these people are. They just don't get it: the party's over. The rest of us have known this for months. No one, except perhaps Fingleton, is running up housekeeping bills of €4,000 a week any more. We're drawing the dole or taking pay cuts.
On Friday, Judge Peter Kelly said Killally must come to his sense and reduce his living expenses. So the councillor will just have to stop crying and get on with life. He'll have to learn how to shop with an eye for a bargain, just like us. (Eurospar has a €3.49 deal on a cabbage/turnip/carrots combo.) He may even have to use public transport and wear slippers now that the underfloor heating is shot.
Here's an offer for you, Ger. Why don't you hire me as your housekeeper? I know how to run a household on less than €4,000 a week. Come on, give me a call. I've a load of mince in the freezer and can be at your place, making your dinner, by tomorrow evening.
I have to admit that when I read about your housekeeping plight last week, the tears ran down my face as well.
Well, where would we be without our sense of humour?

dkenny@tribune.ie

Why I am not ashamed to be drawing the dole again

Sunday Tribune, 8 March, 2008

June 1995, the sun is shining, the economy is recovering, people are smiling… and there's a cloud over my head. I am redundant and staring at the dole office in Dún Laoghaire. I'm 28 and about to sign on for the first time.
The dole office is located beside the 'Tech' college. I always thought this was a strange juxtaposition that sent out the message: "We know you're going to fail your Leaving so we conveniently plonked the dole queue a few feet away."
I wound up repeating my Leaving there in 1985 because I'd cocked up my application to journalism college.
After an all-boys private school, this was heaven. I got to sit beside girls. (GIRLS!) This concentration-drain guaranteed that I was never going to see the inside of journalism college.
Luck loves a chancer, however, and during my stint at the Tech I had my first article published in the Evening Press and landed a job as a 'junior'. Two years later I was a staffer with money in my pocket and a false sense of pride and security.
Ten years on, in June 1995, the Press collapsed and I walked out of the sunlight and into the dole office. All my grafting amounted to nothing and I was a failure. People from Middle Ireland didn't draw the dole. I was a pariah, in my own eyes at least.
It was hard to see the back of the dole queue through the cloud of Major smoke. I'd like to say I smelt the scent of defeat in the air, but I don't recall it. Just my own shame, magnified by the drabness of the surroundings. This was something some of my peers picked up on.
Although it wasn't said, drawing the dole was the final resort. It carried a stigma that ranked somewhere between banging on the poorhouse door and being named in Stubbs Gazette. You were a dosser.
The man who paid me my dole each week clearly thought this as he flung my money through the hatch. His eyes said: "Sponger."
Thursday 5 March, 2009, and the sun is shining. I'm redundant and at the dole office, signing on again. This time I have Jarlath from RTÉ's Mooney Show at my elbow, recording my thoughts.
Production journalism, from which I made 80% of my living, is being universally pared back and it was inevitable that my job as associate editor would come to an end. Last in, first out, and there are, genuinely, no hard feelings.
I am worried though: my wife has taken a 10% pay cut and this column is my only income. I am worried – but I'm not embarrassed. I have asked the Mooneys along because I want to go public about being made redundant. I am not ashamed of this. Middle Ireland still is though.
In the dole office, I spot a former neighbour who was a legal secretary. The man to my left tells me he's in IT and to my right is a luxury car salesman. There are two graduates in front of me. No one will go on the record.
Outside, Jarlath speaks to an architect who agrees that the stigma persists. So does the lady who deals with my claim. She was very sympathetic, by the way.
I tick all the Middle Ireland boxes: I have a semi-d with a crippling boomtime mortgage and a formerly comfortable life. Now I am looking for help from the state.
I went public on the Mooney Show last week to say that there is no shame in this. This is a democratic recession and everyone is being hit, from lawyers to labourers. We are all in freefall and it's vital to remember that it's nothing personal and your own worth hasn't been diminished. If you're reading this and are unemployed, don't be afraid to admit it. There are 350,000 others like us.
I hope I didn't come across as a twat on the radio, whingeing about my own situation. I don't want sympathy: there are people out there much worse off than I am. However, I am very grateful for all the kind messages I've received.
Anyway, enough of all this gloom.
Normal service will resume in this column next week. Brian Cowen, your arse is in my crosshairs.

dave@davekenny.com