The Irish Times property editor, Orna Mulcahy, wrote a letter to Ireland’s estate agents, calling them out for attempting to manipulate the market by exaggerating (translation: lying) about the sale prices of houses bought by private treaty. Massive story. The Sunday Business Post — no stranger to property advertising — runs a big piece on it. It’s a major story on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

So this morning we searched for the Irish Times‘ own version of the story. None can be found. None from two weeks ago when the Irish Times changed its disclaimer and careful readers noticed a change in language when describing prices. None when a reader made the paper aware that this was noticed as a significant, unheralded, change in reporting important financial information. None after the story was reported elsewhere.

So we now have an admission that the Irish Times, Ireland’s “paper of record”, was for years an accomplice to a conspiracy to manipulate a market so central to the Irish economy that its related industries represnt 25% of GDP. Orna Mulcahy now says it was an unwitting accomplice. When “auction figures dropped by 70%”, Mulcahy explained, it left her with a hole on the “sales” page of the Irish Times property section.

How to resolve the dread problem of filling extra space (a problem with which I’m familiar)?

“We went to the auctioneers and said, listen, we’ll take the auction results, obviously. But also if you could give us any of the private treaty results and at least then we can, you know, you know, continue to show, eh, how the market is…doing.”

“It became clear to us earlier this year that we were getting results that were higher than they should have been”.

“We decided that, look, if you can’t give us the right figure, we would rather not to publish the figure, because in the end of the day it is the Irish Times that has been left looking, you know, rather foolish if they’re not able to provide the correct information.”

Morning Ireland hit the nail on the head, methinks, with this question (phrased as a money-quote comment): “The problem for you, as a newspaper, is that we can’t believe what’s printed in your newspaper.”

But surely the problem of this scandal is even bigger and more damaging, when it comes to the credibility of the Irish Times as a “news” paper – there was no editorial take on this scandal at all from the paper.

Some things worth noting (and I’m open to correction):

1. The IT knew, but did not report, that this was going on, when the property editor knew “early this year” – so up to four months ago.

2. The IT did not report the story on this when it sent a letter to estate agents about the practice - though (bizarrely) Orna did reply to a letter-writer who happens to be a contributor to the Property Pin website

3. The IT STILL hasn’t reported its version of the story, even after it broke elsewhere

4. The Irish Times, Ireland’s paper of record, CONTINUES TO ALLOW ITS TRUSTED BRAND TO BE USED TO CLAIM HOUSE PRICES IT KNOWS TO BE (AT BEST) SUSPECT. It has a disclaimer saying it can’t be responsible for the accuracy of the prices. (A newspaper telling you in advance that you shouldn’t rely on what it’s about to tell you seems like the final capitulation of journalism, no?)

5. The Irish Times has direct knowledge of attempted market manipulation by certain estate agents, and has failed to reveal the identity of the ones it knows have been telling porkies. It may be legally safer. But it cannot be good enough for any self-respecting journalist. And that’s the real scandal.

I can understand Orna Mulcahy’s reluctance to publish the story on her own pages – perhaps her uncle John’s Phoenix magazine might give it a whirl – and thus ensure that the story can be discredited entirely by the vested interests that are right now praying to Voldemort that it will be dead and buried (with a stake in its heart at midnight in a swamp by a voodoo priestess).

Hopefully her RTÉ appearance, SBP quotes and family connections will be enough to save her from retaliation, having confirmed a story that leaves her employer “looking rather foolish” – the understatement of the day.

If not, hey. I feel your pain, Orna. Good on you for going public, however reluctantly. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

Cheers:

The Sunday Business Post - in particular Cliff Taylor and Susan Mitchell, for running it

RTÉ Morning Ireland - for following up (though, where’s the news story on their website?)

The Property Pin - for having been all over this for as long as they’ve been up; best reax quotes in the thread (which picked up the SBP story just after 8.17pm Saturday):

“jost” says: “To those who read the Pin, the above will be old news. But in spite of the media coverage given to price drops in the last 6 months, I’d imagine many Sunday paper readers will be shocked to read the above. Judging by the Price Drops forum, vendors with properties around the 1.3m mark still seem to assume that a 50k drop will be enough to sell their house.

While the editor’s honesty should be commended, the IT should really go one step further and scrap the “Sales Results” page entirely. If the information contained there is inaccurate, what purpose does it serve?”

and

CelloPoint: “The IT are codding themselves if they think they can go back to being all independent again when they have a massive VI in a property website and sponsor the IAVI website. I’m sure advertising is going very well for them at the moment — the IT’s concern is the need to strike a balance between keeping the VIs happy and middle Ireland Irish Times readers happy. Once they’re safe in the knowledge that truth and righteousness has been restored at Tara Street, all will be well.”

All tips welcome at the usual email address.