The story so far...

In the beginning, God created Man, and it was good. And Man reached the age of Reason and bought a reasonably priced house, and it was good.
Then Woman bought a reasonably priced house, sold it on, lived the high life on the profit for a while, and THAT was good.
Then Man got married to Woman and they bought a house together, whilst re mortgaging original property and renting it out, and even THAT was good despite a 100% Northern Rock mortgage!

Then the man and woman had a few kids and relocated from 2 fairly good jobs in the UK to Ireland, buying an overpriced house on the proceeds of the sale of their UK residence and indeed on a bit more equity release on the original property and that seemed good.

But that was 2007
And that is where this story REALLY begins.

hi, I'm Mary Jane. I'm a middle aged, middle income Mum with kids in an under resourced rural irish primary school, I live in a village full of houses and stories like mine-people mortgaged to the hilt in negative equity to the tune of at least 50%, with cars, all registered in 2007 or before, with a spouse unemployed or as good as, but putting on the brave face cos we wouldn't be Irish if we didn't now, would we?
We pretend that the school is good-but it isn't-its ceart-go-leor.
We thank god we're healthy because the local hospital IS that bad that it is regularly on the news.
Needless to mention, the roads are a series of potholes slung together by some pebble-dashing.
And recently, people have taken to dumping their domestic waste in the hedgerows of what is probably one of the most picturesque places to live if not in Ireland, in the world!

But sure, tis Grand isn't it?
Sure couldn't it be worser, couldn't it?
So 2009 seemed like the rock bottom-I was working in the third of a series of short term public sector contracts and my husband had managed to get a low paid job in a local factory despite being overqualified for that and a myriad of other jobs in the area.
But we were struggling.
But I didn't know it was going to get worse.

You see, I was brought up to believe that owning your home is very important. In fact, its up there with marriage, having kids and having a pension to retire on.
We clung on to this belief in spite of mounting evidence that we were stuck in a property trap that we had no hope of escaping unless one of us won the lottery.

Nobody really wants to admit how awful negative equity is-but truly it is awful. It deprives you of hope for the future.
In our case, it has also deprived us of our saving and pension.
Every penny we have we can now see we have gambled away on property.
And we are not alone.
There is a silent group of people in Ireland who weep into their pillows or their pints if they can afford them in modern Ireland.
They are like me, men and women lumbered with debts that will never realise any value.
SHackled to poorly built, inadequate houses in places where jobs are now scarcer than hen's teeth.

Yet we say NOTHING. Because we have mothers and fathers, who are proud of us.
We have relations working in financial institutions-respectable, middle class, decent people.
And most of all we are raising the Hope of the Future-who must never know our woes or that their future is also in jeopardy.

Hello I'm Mary Jane. I read the other day about the long awaited personal insolvency legislation.
I won't be allowed to have private medical insurance.
This is kind of the final straw for me, basically.
Cos we all know you don't want to be hospitalised in rural Ireland without it-as you'll be dead.

Life sucks kinda.
G'nite.