Dylan Cullen in The Irish Times (2013-Dec-13) « Back to all media

Dylan Cullen (Founder of Appreciating Assets)

When Ireland entered the bailout programme, we were already a couple of years into the downturn. However, until then people were hoping that we were experiencing a temporary economic blip and were holding out for an improvement. For a lot of people the bailout crystallised how bad the situation was and it was only then that lots of people realised things weren’t going to improve soon.

We’re in the property business, which is not a liquid market so it’s a big decision to turn down an offer. Until the bailout, people were confident enough to turn down offers for their properties and hopefully wait for better one. However, once the bailout came we saw more people start to accept offers. This was largely due to the uncertainty that people felt; they were either not confident a better offer would come, or they had more urgency to turn their assets into cash in case it was needed.

I don’t think Ireland’s exit of the bailout programme will have too much of an immediate effect. The country is far from in the clear, and we still have a large deficit to deal with. I’m not sure we have left the bailout in the correct manner. A line of credit from Europe would have provided a financial crutch. If you try to walk on an injury unaided too soon then you can do more damage and set your recovery back much further. I hope this analogy doesn’t soon apply to Ireland.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/my-bailout-experience-how-business-fared-1.1625475