Daft Property - Irish Property News

We will default, so let's get on with it. But it's not all bad -- a top financier thinks Ireland's glass is half full and our bank debts will be shared... Ireland will default, when it does happen we should not do it alone but with Greece and Portugal; we should consider leaving Europe given how badly they treat us; we need to take a scalpel to our public sector and Ireland will take five to seven years from now to recover. Those are the views of Larry McDonald, former Lehman Brothers vice president turned international best-selling author, who was in Dublin last week speaking at the Irish Funds Industry Association. McDonald was, until September 2008, vice president of distressed debt and convertible securities trading at Lehman Brothers. He was heralded by many colleagues at Lehman for both his early 2006 call on the subprime crisis and the $46m in trading profits realised from it. I sat down with him on Friday afternoon last in the heart of the IFSC to discuss

THE Government has been accused of presiding over a graduate "brain drain". Unemployment among graduates has almost trebled in the past two years, and student leaders say more and more college leavers are being forced to quit the country. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures reveal there were 68,600 unemployed graduates in March, compared with 25,400 at the same time in 2008. The jobs problem is greater for males, who account for 60pc of out-of-work graduates, up from 56pc two years ago. The Economic and Social Research Institute recently warned that 200,000 people may be forced to emigrate between now and 2015 if unemployment is not addressed. And the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) says many of these will be highly skilled graduates. USI president Gary Redmond said it was ironic the Jeanie Johnston famine ship was docked in Dublin's IFSC, the area that was once the heart of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy. USI members are planning a protest at the ship today to