She moves through the gloom
A water-cooled stored in the loft above the
concrete-cutter, some
welding gear, two small
THERE'S generators, several
saws, some key-cutting
equipment and a lot of high-visi-
bility vests. But there are also
sports bags, tracksuits, fishing
rods and a loose bundle of golf
irons that came out of a Ford
Focus. There are toys everywhere
- football games, pink parasols,
dolls' prams - frequently jumbled
up with the work equipment. One
bag contains a large protective
sheet, splattered with paint, of the
sort house painters use, and a
single Barbie armband. That van
came in yesterday.
These are the contents of the
repossessed cars and vans that are
cleaned by staff at Merlin Car Auc-
tions prior to sale. Each vehicle is
cleared of its personal contents
and these are then bagged, with
the type of car and its registration
on the label, along with the date
that it was brought to the 15-acre
Merlin site in Naas.
Serkan Erke is from Turkey,
and at the auction warehouse, his
work colleagues call him Sergio.
He looks at the date on the label
and says: "This one is fresh. I just
did it today." An empty suitcase
stands by itself. It is a mournful
business. Imagine if someone
cleaned out your car. These are
the contents of a Volkswagen
Golf. There is a high-heeled
patent-leather shoe. There are
two carrier bags of Christmas
presents, still wrapped. Sergio
could not decide if these gifts were
for the owner of the car, or from
her. "I didn't look, because it's per-
sonal." But the gifts are all
wrapped in various types of paper,
so I think they might have been
bought by the former owner of the
car. Maybe she didn't have the
time, or the heart, to distribute
them. We also find an unopened
bottle of vodka. "You'd be sorry
for her," says Sergio.
There's a young man's sports
kit here, from another
Volkswagen Golf, with his soccer
boots, his underpants, and his
Fructis hair gel. The hair gel is
called Manga Head. The jar reads
"Free style putty for messed-up
spikes". Out of a Mercedes comes
an Evening Herald, some Turkish
Delight and a guide to some blood-
stock sales.
If these personal items are not
claimed within a year, they are
dumped. Until then they are
valeting bay at Merlin. A pink
heart-shaped cushion that says
"Baby on Board". An entire
toolbox, carefully organised, with
the owner's initials carved into the
head of the mallet. "There's a bar-
becue around here somewhere,"
says Sergio. "And sometimes a
pile of buggies."
Sergio lives in Navan with his
Irish wife and their two little girls.
"The finance companies gave the
money so easy," he says. "People
can only afford a Micra, but they
get a BMW. I'd never get finance.
If they take your car away from
you, you can't work. I drive 90
miles a day."
The repossessed cars and vans
come in from all over the country,
on trucks that can take two or
three vehicles at a time (although
Sergio says the trucks from Cork
carry eight or nine, because the
journey is so long). "We get a list
in the morning and then we know
what we can sell." Once the cars
are cleared for sale the cleaning
starts. "The lads can do six or
seven each per day. Some take a
long time, because people use
them rough. We got 25 done
today."
Sergio oversees this work. He
has seven people under him.
"They work between here and the
yard. But I started at the bottom."
He's never seen anyone come back
for their belongings. "I think Irish
people are so relaxed. In their
minds they're going to pay in a few
days. But it doesn't work like
that." Instead you don't even clear
your car or your van before it is
repossessed. The tangle of your
life is put in a plastic bag by stran-
gers. And it sits with all the other
bags that belong to people who
were unlucky, or chancing their
arm, or just plain wiped out by the
juggernaut of recession. We are
driving across the car park now
and Sergio stops to wind down the
window and say "what's the
crack? welcome back" to an
unseen colleague.
"Ireland has changed. I came in
1996," he says as we approach the
auction area. "When I came it was
a different country."
CLEANED OF ALL their human
detail, the cars lie shining under
the lights, looking pretty spruce,
like old war horses waiting for
another army. Who knows what
stories the 2007 Mayo Ford
Transit could tell? Who knows
what happened in the 2004 Shgo
Land Rover Freelander? And who
cares now, really, as prospective
buyers move among them? Two
uniformed gardai are examining a
bronze Ford Mondeo Estate with
a 2007 registration. Are they
looking for stolen cars, I wonder?
No, one of them is looking to buy a
car.
His colleague and I agree that
this is a sad sight, all these sud-
denly repossessed cars. All you
had to do was pay your bills, says
the purchasing guard briskly, after
he has lifted the bonnet of the
Ford Mondeo. The car later went
for €13,500.
There's a young van dealer here
from Cork. There are two men,
Damien Stoney and his friend,
who've come up from Clifden,
Co Galway, for the auction.
"You can take the car away
tonight, if you buy," says Stoney.
"You just change your insurance
and you can do that with most of
them online." He is hoping to take
M
Hare the
contents of the
repossessed cars
and vans, which
are cleaned by
staff at Merlin
Car Auctions
prior to sale
advantage of Merlin s new car
swap scheme, under which you
can put the value of your present
car up against a new purchase.
This new scheme was started, say
Merlin staff, partly to facilitate cus-
tomers who wanted "to swap down-
wards".
Martin Calderwood, who lives
in Maynooth, is looking for a car
for his wife, who is expecting a
baby. "A [Renault] Scinic or a
Mggane," he says. "But the deals
in the North are better. They've
2004 cars up there of the type I'm
looking for and they're €5,000
with the VRT paid." You can buy a
burger or hotdogs - €4 each -
from a stall. You can eat them
looking out at a sea of gleaming
cars and vans. A Clare man, who
runs his own auctions in his home
county, gazes out at the hundreds
of cars. "You have to say that
something serious is going on in
the country when you see this," he
says.
He's heard that the finance
companies are looking for a lot of
dormobiles and camper vans,
which have "just vanished on to
the continent. They're looking for
them in Europe. A lot of them
would have been bought here
with the left-hand drive. They
were worth more with the left-
hand drive." There are stories like
this everywhere but it is still
cheering, to think of Irish camper
vans kicking their heels in
Morocco or the south of Spain,
fugitives from the slaughter.
The new Merlin Car Auctions
campus is very bright. As the
crowds arrive for the auction they
look somehow American, all bun-
dled up against the winter night.
With its sparkling new toilets and
its hot dogs, this venue could be a
baseball park. In reception, John
Fell is frantically
selling cata-
logues at €5 each. "No one comes
to an auction on their own," says
Patrick O'Reilly, a director of
Merlin, darkly. The walls are
hung with old photographs of Mer-
lin's old incarnation, Windsor
Motors, which started running
car auctions in 1974. In modern
times, the Merlin website gets
5,000 hits every day.
O'Reilly does not think there
have ever been more people at an
auction than there are this
evening. About 800, Merlin will
say, although it looks more like
1,000 to me. It is like a circus. For
some time now there have been
so many cars and vans to sell that
Merlin has been running a two-
lane auction twice a week. Two
lanes of cars, two rostrums, two
auctioneers
running simultane-
to Patrick
ously. According
O'Reilly, in 2007 the average
value of cars Merlin sold at auc-
tion was €8,000-€9,000. In 2008
it was €13,000-€14,000. In June
2006 private buyers made up
7 per cent of Merlin's customers.
Now they make up more than
40 per cent.
Going for a song: Above, Merlin
Car Auctions in Naas where
more than 300 cars were up for
auction on Wednesday night.
Left, Norman Colfer, an
auctioneer at Merlin.
Below, a 2002 Lotus Elise, one
of the cars featured in the
event Photographs: Alan Betson
 Repossessions of commercial
vehicles have gone up 147 per cent
since July 2007 and prices of com-
mercial vehicles have come down
by up to 50 per cent. The reposses-
sion of private cars has gone up
100 per cent since September -
and is expected to exceed 5,000
private vehicles this year.
Yes, it is a circus now. Norman
Colfer, the dapper auctioneer in
the lane that contains 138 repos-
sessed vehicles, has to keep asking
the crowds to part to let the cars
and vans through. Colfer is
80 years old. He's a showman and
as sharp as a tack. "I know things
are bad but they're not that bad,"
says Colfer as he provisionally sells
a Chevrolet Lacetti for €3,500.
During the evening, Colfer periodi-
cally cries "Send for the guards,
I'm robbed". There is money here.
removed. They all roll through the
As each lot comes up Colfer says
crowd, which is unimpressed by
"she's clean, lads, she's clean".
them, even though the same vans
He is looking for €30,000 for a were once so busy.
2006 Mercedes CLS 320, and gets Surely this must be the peak, I
€29,000. But a 2005 Renault say. There are nine or 10 car-
Master II DCI I2O, a tall, pale and finance institutions operating in
substantial van, can attract no the country, and even though they
more than €3,800. The name of have slowed down their lending,
the previous owner of the Renault the people at Merlin expect a full
Master is proudly emblazoned on
year of this level of activity, maybe
its sides, on its back doors. "Car- into 2010. There is so much
pentry and Joinery," reads the future. In six days time Merlin will
sign. It inches through the crowd receive a 2006 Aston Martin DB9.
at a humiliating crawl, leaving the
dreams it once contained and the
bid of just €3,800 behind.
Then there is the colourful and
cheerful signage van. The 2008
Volkswagen Crafter TDI van -
which is so big Colfer declares
"you could live in this" - goes for
€11,000. The 2005 Opel Movano
with "Professional Floor Sanders
24x7" written on it. Only the
mobile-phone number has been