Rich use of language deployed to describe affluent addresses

DUBLIN 4, Hampstead, Beverly Hills: these need no introduction and anyone citing them as their places of residence can rest assured that people will guess at their vintage.

But estate agents selling homes in certain Irish hot spots have felt the need to spell out the prestigiousness of some areas with an eagerness that borders on the desperate.

The talented wordsmiths got to work on the Point Village - Harry Crosbie's redevelopment of the The Point into a large neighbourhood near Dublin Port - describing it as in the "centre of Dublin's coastal wealth belt". Sounds great, but the imagined "coastal wealth belt" has quite a few pockets of relative poverty. Dunnes Stores, to take the anchor store at Point Village, was keen to get in on the act with a spokesperson for the firm describing a 1,000-space car-park at its store as "extremely friendly".

Anyone contemplating purchasing the magnificent Camelot in Bushypark, near Galway city centre, is assured by the agent that the neighbourhood is "the affluent address of prestige and opulence".

As for abroad, Eurovea in Bratislava is full of "intimate, tactile havens" (the bathroom) and "rhythmic undulating facades".

Rich indeed.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times