Anyone not coupled up gets the message – no dogs or singletons welcome
Not wishing to begrudge happy pairs but it is blatant discrimination to charge Bridget Jones or a man called Ove
double the sum
just because they do not have a significant other. Hotel owners have been demanding that the public foot the bill to cut the VAT rate on their business while they continue to penalise tens of thousands of them for the social crime of being unattached. A well-known hotel is promoting a 'summer special' of two nights B&B plus dinner on one night at €299 pps for those over 65, while singletons the same age must pay €498 each. At the time of the 2022 census, 189,574 people in that age bracket were living alone.
Hoteliers are not the only culprits. Tour operators and travel agents are at it too. Fancy a seven-night escorted tour of northern Spain in the autumn? Sounds enticing – return flights with check-in luggage, four-star accommodation, wine tasting, excursions to museums and vineyards – except, if you're a singleton, you pay €425 extra for the pleasure. That's €60-plus added for each day. Perhaps a cruise would be preferable. Forget it – you'll pay a singles supplement for that too. Why don't the unattached just go and buy a tent and pitch it somewhere out of everyone's sight?
It is understandable that hotels want to maximise their revenue by having two paying customers in a room instead of only one but their rebuff of solo guests makes Scrooge look altruistic by comparison with the so-called hospitality sector. The government has indicated it intends to lower the VAT rate to 9 per cent again, at least for the food and catering elements of the sector, which include hotel diningrooms. If it ploughs ahead with the plan, it should impose an obligation on hotels to provide an adequate proportion of their bedrooms for single person occupancy.
READ MORE
[
https://www.irishtimes.com/your-money/2024/11/05/nine-areas-where-it-costs-to-be-single-and-one-where-youre-quids-in/
Opens in new window
]
But that would be like expecting Donald Trump to have your baby. The State itself is so biased against single people as to be biologically incapable of playing fair. Even if singletons aged 66 to 70 do find someone with whom to share a hotel room, they are expected to travel alone should they wish to use their free travel pass to get there. Unlike the coupled-up whose spouses automatically go free too, the unattached must prove they are incapable of travelling alone to be deemed eligible for a travelling companion.
You could take the car but, there again, you will be punished for living alone. Insurance companies offer a price discount if the customer can conjure up a named driver to add to the policy. And, no, your great uncle Joe who emigrated to Cincinnati will not suffice.
Singlism is the great unacknowledged survivor of the war on -isms
Then there is the tax system. Married couples can minimise their income tax bill by opting to be jointly assessed while the singleton has no choice but to pay the full whack. The discrimination is even more pronounced when it comes to gift and inheritance tax. Better-off parents can lessen their offspring's future inheritance tax bill by availing of the €3,000 annual gift tax exemption. Fiona Reddan
did the sums in Tuesday's edition of this newspaper
when she calculated that a child could have a €140,000 nest egg by the age of 18 if both parents deposited the full yearly tax-free amount from birth in an account growing at a rate of three per cent annually. A child in the country's 219,996 one-parent families could not hope for even half that amount.
Prejudice against single people pervades society. Anecdotes abound about how those minus a ready-made plus one get invited to fewer dinner parties because they unbalance the seating arrangement or, worse, they might run off with someone's spouse after the port and stilton. 'You don't fit in', goes the message. Ours is a matrimanic culture where the married-two-kids family rules. That culture was bolstered last year when more than a million voters rejected the referendum proposing to expand the constitutional definition of family beyond the married kind. Singlism is the great unacknowledged survivor of the war on -isms. In the last census, 23 per cent of Irish households comprised a sole occupant and yet they remain invisible in the realm of public policies and practices.
[
The joys of solo travelling: 'You're exploring a new place and exploring yourself as well'
Opens in new window
]
Residential property prices are so high that young people need two incomes to afford a home in many parts of Dublin or, for that matter, Cork and Galway. Just ask the 522,486 adults still living with their parents why they're not coupled up in their own love nests.
Singletons fortunate enough to have a home of their own need only venture as far as the supermarket for the next belt of a baton from the how-dare-you-live-alone police. The shelves are stacked with the extra bill for the one-person household. See the packet of five plain bagels with a best before date in two days' time. That special offer of three packets of pork medallions for €9 looks tasty, except there are four fillets in each packet. Pigs will fly before you get to eat all 12 of them. On a recent shopping expedition, the only free-range chicken breasts available were in packs of three. The courgettes came in pairs. It would be courgette for breakfast, dinner and tea in the one-person home.
If businesses and governments won't think of the singletons, they might at least think of the planet. Food waste depletes resources and degrades the soil. According to earth.org, it accounts for one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
The total number of people living alone when the 2022 census was taken (425,974) had risen by seven per cent since the 2016 census. The signs are that the number will continue to rise. It's past time for the establishment to drop its JD Vance-esque 'childless cat ladies' derision of those who live alone and start planning for the future of shrinking households.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
A letter from Michael O'Leary: ‘MetroLink is a mad, bad project'
Sir, – Unbelievable!! Only an Irish Times columnist (with no known experience in transport) could waste her half-page column, slagging off Dermot Desmond and myself for criticising the Dublin MetroLink, without once mentioning the projected cost of approximately €20 billion!! Being criticised by Irish Times columnists is always a great compliment. In what crazy country could we seriously consider wasting approximately €20 billion of taxpayer money on a railway line, serving a narrow strip of the north Dublin population from Swords to St Stephen's Green, all of whom are well served currently by bus connections? The cost/benefit of this insanity has never been published, because it cannot be justified. Dermot Desmond's transport view should carry significant weight, given his very successful rescue, redevelopment and sale of London City Airport for approximately $1 billion in 2006. My own, (less?) humble view is based on almost 40 years' experience of growing, what is now the world's largest passenger airline. READ MORE But sadly we are both guilty of 'being rich', so therefore dismissed by The Irish Times 'experts', who know so much more about transport. I wouldn't quibble with a MetroLink from Swords to St Stephen's Green if it was free, but there are far better uses of taxpayer funds, than this white elephant. Muddled thinking, free of any cost/benefit analysis, such as that displayed by Justine McCarthy, is how you deliver a children's hospital (which should have cost €200 million) at a final cost of €2.5 billion and rising. My criticism of the MetroLink is based on the fact, that very few passengers at Dublin Airport will ever use it. It takes passengers into St Stephen's Green, so some small minority of inbound visitors might use it, but the vast majority of Irish originating passengers, who need to get to Dublin Airport early in the morning, or are travelling to/from outside the D2 / D4 area, won't use it. Dublin Airport is just 9km from the centre of the city, and is well served by competitively priced bus connections, which takes passengers to the city centre, and to points all over Ireland at low fares. These passengers won't switch to a €20 billion metro. Your columnist claims that I 'opposed the second terminal at Dublin Airport in 2010. I didn't. Dublin needed a second terminal l and I offered to build it on the North Apron for just €200 million, as Ryanair had proposed. I simply pointed out that the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), wasted €2 billion, building Terminal 2 in the wrong place (a cul-de-sac) and with no ability to future expand. Now that the second runway has opened on the north apron, the chronic congestion in the T2 cul-de-sac bedevils the T2 airlines on a daily basis. I note Ms McCarthy failed to offer her opinion on the Dublin Airport second runway (a project which I also supported), yet which the airlines and our passengers are prevented from using, by a 2007 (Road Traffic) Planning restriction. We elected a new government last November which promised to remove this cap 'as soon as possible', which would enable the airlines at Dublin to grow traffic, new routes, tourism and jobs. Sadly, eight months later the Government has failed to take any action to scrap this cap. More inexcusable delay and inaction from our political class. To summarise, both I and Dermot Desmond believe, wasting €20 billion on a Dublin Airport metro, is an unjustifiable waste of scarce taxpayer funds. I object because the majority of Dublin Airport passengers won't ever use this vastly overpriced service. Dermot correctly suggests that Al and electric road transport will solve the problem at a fraction of this €20 billion over the next decade. The fact that an unqualified Irish Times columnist considers that 'two rich men' are wrong, only renews my faith that this MetroLink is a mad, bad project. Add some more buses to service the citizens of Swords, Ballymun, Collins Avenue, and Glasnevin, and The Irish Times could save Irish taxpayers (me included!) about €19.9 billion rather than squandering these funds, as we have on the world's most expensive, and least efficient, Children's Hospital. If the next time Ms McCarthy wants to offer an opinion on government transport projects, perhaps she could address the cost benefit of the project, rather than slagging off two successful – albeit opinionated – business people. We won't always be right, but we will be right, far more often than the misguided, anti-business Irish Times 'chatterati'. – Yours, etc, MICHAEL O'LEARY. Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin.
Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Irish Times
Boyne Companions – Frank McNally on why the road from Dublin to Slane lies mainly on a plain (allegedly)
Glamping on the banks of the Boyne at Slane , Co Meath , on Saturday night, I was reminded what a staggeringly beautiful setting for a village that is. Historic too, of course. Our campsite was on the right bank of the river – the Jacobite side during the famous battle of 1690, which happened a few miles east of Slane. But it was hard to imagine this had ever been a place of conflict as peace came dropping slow on the steep, wooded hills. The only threat we faced at the weekend was from an army of insects that invaded the tent overnight. An indirect effect of 1690 was to change ownership of the local castle, of which we had fine views across the water. Perhaps ironically for a battle won by a Dutch king, the big losers included a family called the Flemings. They had previously lost castle and lands in the confiscations following the 1641 rebellion, before regaining royal favour in subsequent decades. Then they ended up on the wrong side of history again in 1690. The Conyghams – an Ulster plantation family, ancestors of the late Henry Mount Charles – acquired the estate soon after. READ MORE The loveliness of the setting is matched by Slane itself, a model of 18th-century British town planning and still dominated by handsome stone buildings. In keeping with its left-bank setting, the village now has a self-deprecatingly declared 'arty quarter'. And it all looked rather idyllic on Saturday night, especially the view down on the old bridge, as the sun set on the river and on its adjoining canal, which used to serve the biggest mill in Ireland, now a hotel. I haven't always appreciated Slane's beauty. Before the M1, it used to be the halfway point on the journey between my hometown (Carrickmacross) and Dublin: a route that, north of Slane at least, is notoriously hilly and winding. As a child and later, I was prone to car/bus sickness, especially on morning trips. Slane tended to mark the full onset of nausea. From there on, it was a grim battle to retain my breakfast as far as Dublin. Sometimes, having reached the outskirts of the city but unable to trust myself for another 20 minutes of lurching through traffic, I would decamp from the bus at Finglas for fresh air and resume the journey on a 19A. [ A life's work reviving the Irish language - Oliver O'Hanlon on Liam Ó Briain Opens in new window ] It could have been worse. Even back then, the road from Slane to Dublin was relatively flat and very straight. This was in part a reflection of different terrain. But it was also – according to oral tradition – a legacy of the fact that King George IV had his favourite mistress in Slane Castle . Hence, during his Irish royal visit of 1821, he made a beeline for there, the road smoothed in advance, and spent most of the trip in her company, to the chagrin of Irish loyalists elsewhere. The mistress in question was Elizabeth Conygham, maternal forebear of Lord Henry. She was married and a mother of several children. But being consort of the monarch was a semi-respectable career in former centuries, so she used it to advance the family's wealth and status, her husband becoming a marquess as part of the deal. Kayakers on the river Boyne at Slane Castle in Co Meath. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire After serving time as one of the assistant mistresses, she ousted Isabelle Seymour-Conway, Marchioness of Hertford, from the main job in about 1820, just as the then prince ascended to the throne. And although she was hitting 50 and he a decade older, the new king was besotted. He was said to be 'nodding and winking' at her throughout the coronation ceremony. For ordinary people, such an ancestral inheritance might be an embarrassment, to be spoken of in whispers if at all. But the aristocracy are not like us. On a visit to Slane Castle after the recent funeral (the whole congregation was invited back, including journalists), I was amused to see that a giant portrait of George IV is still a centrepiece of the ballroom. In fact, it was one of the treasures saved during the 1991 fire, when Lord Henry cut the canvas from the frame just before flames gutted the place. [ Make more of the Moores: An Irish village's connection to the Hollywood Walk of Fame Opens in new window ] In fairness, the castle also displays a pair of cartoons satirising the couple, who enjoyed high living as well as each other and were both somewhat corpulent as a result – a detail the caricaturists exaggerated. According to The Irish Aesthete (a website curated by my former Irish Times colleague Robert O'Byrne), the extent to which the king's Irish visit was dominated by his Slane lover inspired much mockery. One satirist commented in verse: 'Tis pleasant at seasons to see how they sit/First cracking their nuts, and then cracking their wit/Then quaffing their claret – then mingling their lips/Or tickling the fat about each other's hips.' In any case, according to legend, the affair left its mark on Irish transport infrastructure. The course of true love may never have run smooth, according to Shakespeare. But the road from Dublin to Slane seems to be an exception.
Irish Times
19 hours ago
- Irish Times
Iarnród Éireann appoints Shannon Airport Group CEO Mary Considine as its new CEO
Shannon Airport Group chief executive Mary Considine is to leave her role to become CEO of Iarnród Éireann later this year. Ms Considine will succeed Jim Meade at Iarnród Éireann following his retirement. She will leave her job at Shannon Airport Group after six years at the helm. The Shannon group's deputy chief executive Ray O'Driscoll will assume the role of chief executive on an interim basis as a recruitment process takes place. Ms Considine is currently a director of Ibec and sits on its audit and risk committee, while she is also a director of Limerick Chamber of Commerce, as well as a trustee and governing authority member of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick. READ MORE Her tenure at Shannon Airport Group was marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, and she has been credited with leading its recovery from the crisis to deliver its highest passenger levels in 15 years. [ Shannon Airport traffic increases 7% in first six months of 2025 Opens in new window ] 'She led the restructuring of the group to position it for growth, providing vital strategic national infrastructure, enabling essential air connectivity for the country, developing high quality commercial property solutions and growing the economic impact of our activities,' Shannon Airport Group said. Iarnród Éireann chairman Steve Murphy said Ms Considine would lead the company's 5,300-strong team and work to realise its ambition of delivering an €8 billion national programme of capital investment projects, which is aimed at doubling current passenger numbers by 2030. She will also be charged with progressing the group's port development and plans for an offshore renewable hub at Rosslare Europort in Co Wexford. 'Our railway, at the heart of Ireland's sustainable transport network, as well as Rosslare Europort, are critical national assets, and I look forward to meeting and working with the team at Iarnród Éireann to deliver on the company's huge ambition during such a transformative era,' said Ms Considine.
