RTÉ Business: More than 20% of households in arrears


Everything will be fine in 2010

I've been deprived of a Ferrari for several years now. I wonder why I wasn't polled.

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We, who are like senseless children, shrink from suffering, but love its causes.


- Shantideva

Arrears of some type being the key words. 20% of households are not in mortgage arrears and I would imagine that even in the height of the boom alot of people were in arrears on their credit card, in fact I know they were.

It isn't great news but the OP is certainly putting slant on it.

Perhaps JF, but many many people are in arrears in secondary bills, because they dare not to go into arrears on their mortgages, feeling that the roof over their heads is the most important thing. In the long term, this is probably the worst possible way of looking at it, because mortgage arrears have the lowest interest rates of any other arrears that they are likely to have i.e loans, credit cards etc. You'd be as well of negotiating a 12 month mortgage break and getting rid of the other loans if at all possible. 12-18 extra months on the end of a 25 year mortgage isn't as getting into spiralling CC debt today

I find this article somewhat incomprehensible in its shortness.

"that more than 20% of households are in arrears of at least one type." I had expected more?

"Households where the head of the house was unemployed had an increase of more than 25% in their average disposable income," I don't understand this.

"The average annual disposable income increased by 2.2% to €49,043." That seems quite a lot, but I'm never sure what "disposable income" actually means?

Was 2008, though.

Does this mean that 20% of the washing up is undone or 20% of the rears are unclean?

We can no longer afford to let FF knowingly steal €43 Bn from a country on it's knees. No to NAMA.

And those are 2008 figures. The figures for 2009 must be much, much worse.

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"The transition from Capitalism to Communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." V.I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.

Just to put a little perspective on this, this includes utilities,and other forms of credit, eg credit cards,to name one.

Now if there is one person on this site have never been in arrears on any form of bill/loan etc, please step foward and tell the rest of us how its done, because the rest of us need to know...

This is a non-story, unless they can categorise the arrears into the various heading's.

I have no doubt that people are struggling btw...

Well going by official logic the cost of living has dropped so we should all be well able to cope now.