Skip to main content

The Black Hole Of Ireland...Irish Economy...Recession Looms...

The Irish Examiner mentions in a report today:

SURGING unemployment and sliding tax returns helped blow a €5.6bn black hole in Government finances last night...

The opposition’s ire focused on Mr Cowen, who had been Finance Minister up to May, rather than Mr Lenihan.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore accused Mr Cowen of “walking the country into the red”.

Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said Mr Cowen had to take personal responsibility for the scale of downturn as he had introduced four inflationary budgets designed to meet the needs of the “electoral cycle, not the economic cycle”.

These budgets had used the unsustainable revenues from the property boom to “ramp up spending increases” at twice the rate of growth of the economy, Mr Bruton said.




The Irish Independent paints a similar gloomy black hole picture...

MINISTERS will have to cut €500m from their spending plans to pay for increased dole payments, as the property slump blows a €3bn black hole in their tax take.

Department of Finance officials now expect the jobless queues to lengthen by an average of 5,000 a month for the rest of the year, bringing the average number on the Live Register to 210,000...

...But that depends on the rest of the economy -- outside of building and property -- holding firm. A string of other bad news yesterday suggested it may not: Stock markets slumped again, with the Dublin market falling to its lowest level in five years.

The falls were led by building companies, as the outlook for property markets worsened in Ireland and Britain.

...With interest rates set to rise today, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet seemed to warn that more may follow, saying inflation could "explode" without decisive action by central banks...

...The Exchequer returns show tax revenues were €1.45bn short of expectations in the first six months of the year. Taxes from property and construction were almost entirely to blame...

...Fine Gael said the mid-term Exchequer figures "show conclusively" that the Taoiseach had blown the boom and brought about "the worst deterioration in our public finances in the history of the State". Labour said the figures "paint a sorry picture of Brian Cowen's stewardship of the economy."

Popular posts from this blog

Property Crash Homes For Sale...

Hundreds of repossessed homes in Ireland to be sold by auction... UK property consultancy Allsop to hold auction in April at Dublin's Shelbourne hotel: Flats in Ireland that could have fetched €150,000 in the Celtic Tiger years are to be put on the market for as little as €25,000 (£21,000) in the country's first ever mass auction of repossessed homes. And, in a sign of how wide the property crash is, the latest item to turn up in liquidation sales in Dublin is a job lot of 15 cranes, including a pair towering over Anglo Irish Bank's half-built headquarters in the city's docklands. "Tower cranes were among the most sought-after heavy plant and machinery 10 years ago," Ricky Wilson of Wilsons Auctions says. "You couldn't buy them quick enough. Now they are left idle for two or three years on sites." He has 15 cranes worth €500,000 going on sale on 26 March, with German, Dutch and Polish buyers expressing interest. But it is the auction ...

Young, Irish And Out Of Here...

As the government continues to pump billions into our much discredited banking system, many Irish people unable to find work here are facing into a future outside of this country. John Downes, News Investigations Correspondent, spoke to some of the new Irish diaspora about their recent experiences of emigration... By any stretch of the imagination, they were a startling set of figures, prompting echoes of a past which we thought we had left behind. According to ESRI data released last week, we can expect net emigration of 60,000 in the year to this April – and a further 40,000 by April 2011. That's almost 1,000 of our best and brightest leaving every week. Yet the ESRI's predictions are simply the latest – if most stark – indications of a return to mass emigration among Ireland's unemployed, as the downturn has continued to take its toll. In September, for example, the Central Statistics Office revealed that Ireland witnessed a return to net emigration for the first time si...

More Allsop Fire Sales...

Allsop plans five fire sales a year... THE UK auction house Allsop and its Irish affiliate Space plans to hold up to five distressed property auctions a year following the success of its first auction last Friday when 81 out of 82 lots were sold for a total of €15 million. The next auction is scheduled for July 7th, when 200 lots will be auctioned, including apartments, tenanted shops, farms and houses. According to Space director Stephen McCarthy, his company is being inundated with requests from receivers, banks and individuals who want to sell their property fast. Many of the properties in Friday’s auction were sold by Bank of Scotland Ireland and it’s believe there is plenty more of this stock to sell. These include apartments in the Castleforbes development in the Dublin docklands, as well as units in Dublin 8 and in Castleknock. However, the agency is also considering taking on more agricultural land. One lot, a 55 acre farm in Co Wickow sold particularly well, making €42...