Daft Property - Irish Property News

Year of the great smash and grab raid -- by the banks... IF THERE is one thing you can bank on, it is that 2010 will go down as the year of the great bank robbery. Usually the raiders take money from the bank. But in the case of this bank job, the ones who have had their cash torn away from them in an audacious smash and grab raid are consumers. Banking was once a byword for trust, but today's Irish bankers are a sorry lot. They now have their hands out, begging for a bail-out. Unfortunately, we have no choice other than to stump up and fund their losses from lunatic loans that were advanced with abandon to developers and others during the boom. We are set to learn today exactly how many billions of euro will be required to be pumped into the banks in order to bring them back to health. But it is almost certain that the State will end up as the majority owner of AIB and Irish Nationwide, along with significant stakes in Bank of Ireland and EBS Building Society. And these banks and ...

Our economy has 'fallen off a cliff'... Ireland's economy has "fallen off a cliff" and is in the grip of the worst recession in its history as new figures reveal it has shrunk by almost 25 per cent from its peak. A loss of nearly one-quarter of the country's domestic trade in such a short period of time is seen as a catastrophe. The domestic economy, the day-to-day business of trading, has been decimated and business leaders have called on Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to follow the lead of the British, who put small businesses at the heart of their economic recovery plan. According to the new figures, since the peak of Ireland's economic wealth creation in the first quarter of 2007, Ireland's economy has reduced by a frightening 24.27 per cent, far higher than previously thought. While the main political agenda was last week dominated by Taoiseach Brian Cowen's reshuffle, focus will next week return to the state of the country's finances, wit...

Ireland needs a new publicly owned bank modelled on a lender that helped rebuild Germany after the Second World War, it was claimed today. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said a state bank was necessary to inject much-needed cash into struggling smaller firms and business start-ups. A Strategic Investment Bank - based on Germany's KfW bank, which was set up under the post-war Marshall Plan to rebuild a devastated Europe - would also raise money for public projects, he claimed. "Businesses need money to start up and keep going," he said. "At the moment and certainly for the foreseeable future there does not appear to be any prospect that the existing banking system is going to provide that finance." Mr Gilmore said the proposed bank would be set up with €2bn taken from the national pension fund, with another €18bn raised from international money markets. Under the Labour plan, it would have a small number of branches and, while state-owned, would be run independently...

House prices 'set for further 10pc fall' says leading economist... House prices will fall by another 10pc before the market hits rock bottom next year, a leading economist predicted today. Jim Power, chief economist of Friends First, believes while the recession is likely to end around the middle of this year, consumer confidence and spending will continue to be undermined by wage cuts, an uncertain labour market and further reductions in state spending. The finance house revealed six out of 10 consumers are not confident in the Government's ability to revive the economy, with a third backing a Fine Gael/Labour coalition to do the job. Mr Power said it was difficult to be convinced the economic situation will improve considerably in the near future. "The Irish economy is going through an extremely difficult adjustment and the situation remains precarious. It is way too early to sound the all clear," he warned. "A fundamental reform of taxation and spending is...

29 property suicides leave State unmoved... Families torn apart by cash crisis Twenty-nine deaths by suicide can be directly linked to the turmoil in the construction and property sector but dozens more deaths among small investors, homeowners and construction industry workers linked to financial despair have gone unreported. David Mellon, of the Irish Property Council believes the human misery inflicted by the collapse in the property and construction industry is incalculable and the Government is doing nothing to protect the sanctity of the family home. He predicted that by the time the economy recovers, hundreds will have taken their own lives because they have been plunged into a financial abyss from which they can see no way out. "We are talking about people who invested in property, people who earned their livelihood from it in many forms; builders, plasterers, plumbers, developers and large and small investors. "They are now facing financial disaster, bankruptcy and de...

EU Commission throws cold water on hopes worst of budget crisis over... THE EU Commission yesterday took on the role of the man who blew out the light at the end of the tunnel. Tuesday was a good day in terms of the public finances. The Government, through the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), managed to borrow €1bn at the lowest interest rates since December 2008, when compared with equivalent German rates. The head of the NTMA suggested the gap between Irish and German interest rates on government debt could be less than 1pc by the end of the year. Any sane person not still living in bubble land would regard that as an eminently reasonable "spread", given the differences between the two economies. But the commission threw a large bucket of cold water on any flickering hopes that the worst of the budget crisis was over. In its formal report on the public finances of 14 EU states, it warned that the tough Irish budgetary plans, over which so much anger and anguish h...

"For the love of God, and his blessed disciple St Patrick, displace me from this wretched isle"... Mbwana minister! All hail from the Emerald Isle, on this, its patron saint's feast day! It is my 10th year here! Any chance of granting me the posting that I sought after my very first week? To somewhere civilised, like North Korea, or Burma, or dear old Liberia? I liked Liberia. Yes, they sometimes kill children there, but that is in war: the highest men in the land raped children at a time of peace in this country, and got away with it. Big men, Mbwana. Important men, with purple hats, and their crimes were covered up by other men with purple hats. The health ministry here is pioneering new long thin hospital wards called "corridors". There is no money for the patients, because it is all being spent on the staff. Thousands of people are X-rayed here, and then no one bothers to read the X-rays, ho ho ho. In a county called Kerry, they are building a new hospital i...

Artists and entrepreneurs are the key to our recovery... On St Patrick's Day two years ago, while nudging my way up a crammed Fifth Avenue, the idea of the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum came to me. I'd thought about it before and I had seen how other countries cultivated relationships with their global tribes -- particularly the Jewish tribe and Israel -- but it was only after seeing the unique outpouring of Irish America on March 17 that I knew we should do this. We should tap into the power of the tribe and see where it takes us. Like many initiatives, the real power of something like Farmleigh can never be dictated in advance. There is an element of chaos in putting people together who don't know each other and are bonded by something as fluid as having an "interest" in Ireland and allowing the conversations and ideas to flow. But Ireland has never been short of ideas, if anything we have loads of ideas and not enough people who can execute them. The hardest par...

This time of crisis affords us great opportunity to redefine ourselves... The vision of our leaders is bankrupt. Now is the time to change our political culture IN TIMES of crisis, more than any other time, we need our politicians to provide leadership and clarity so we can make some sense of what we should be doing as citizens. In our current malaise we are still waiting for them and our public and corporate leaders to empower us with ideas so that we may reimagine our new Republic. It is a time of trauma and also of great opportunity and the need to correct this for the next generation should be a priority. What has been evident is that our artists, writers, thinkers, philosophers and (some) economists have been suggesting alternatives and a way of thinking afresh. I’m not suggesting that these new ideas will make us financially solvent again but in the absence of a dynamic political leadership, it is as good a place to start as any. It will, at the very least, replenish our idealism...

'Returning to the spirit of Tiger Ireland is pointless. Only a completely new political movement can tackle the challenges'... DECLAN KIBERD : The UDC professor of English outlines what he believes needs to be done to fix Ireland NOBODY KNOWS what will happen next – not even our leaders. We walk as a community in darkness down a strangely unfamiliar road, into a new landscape for which there are no maps. Except, possibly, newspapers. Their sales may be in decline, but you can bet your life that more people are reading a newspaper, and in greater detail, every day. If you call into an office still lucky enough to be in business, you are likely to find people reading the morning paper. Four or five years ago, these readers would have been rushed off their feet with work to do and would have managed to glance at headlines only at the end of a fantastic day. The unwelcome increase in “free time” is but one reason for this heightened interest in current affairs. Another is the fact...

NAMA board get pay increase of up to 70pc... National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) board members have received a hike in salary -- despite being less than three months in the job. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan yesterday confirmed he had approved a new fee structure for the nine-strong board in light of their increased workload. The board's chair, former Revenue Commissioner boss Frank Daly, will receive €170,000, a 70pc increase on his original pay packet of €100,000. And the team of ordinary members will receive an annual fee of €50,000, rather than the €38,000 first proposed. The board, which comprises of six ordinary members, two ex-officio members and one chairperson, were appointed by Mr Lenihan in December They have responsibility for shaping NAMA and will decide the future of developers, ranging from household names to small-time developers. Besides Mr Daly, the ordinary members of NAMA's board are former AIG official Eilish Finan, former Bank of Ireland board member...

Recession damage to Ireland is permanent, says OECD... THE global economic crisis has left deep scars that will take years to heal, but the Government must start now to plan for economic growth, said a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Highlighting the scale and depth of the recession, the report estimates a permanent loss of 3pc in output (GDP) on average across the 30 countries of the OECD. Unemployment will persist at higher levels than before the crisis. The report said Ireland has experienced a severe set-back in living standards that is "likely to have permanent effects". But it noted that, despite this, Ireland's per-capita income is now close to the average of the upper half of the 30 OECD countries. Structure However, the structure of the Irish economy means real income is 15pc less than output -- the second largest such gap in the OECD. In its review of Ireland's economic policies, the Paris-based thinktank sa...

Ireland’s share of an EU sponsored bailout of Greece would be between €200 million and €400 million, according to an exercise carried out for a European think tank. Open Europe, a broadly Eurosceptic think tank based in London, has estimated what each EU country would be required to pay if Greece was unable to refinance its debts, of which €20 billion to €25 billion will mature in the coming two months. Under a series of possible systems, it estimated that Ireland’s share of the bill would be between €227 million and €406 million. The broad range was accounted for by uncertainty of the size of the bailout and the system used for calculating the contribution. Open Europe said that meeting the cost of the bailout could be either spread among all members of the European Union or confined to those who used the euro as a currency. Ireland’s largest exposure - of about €400 million - would arise if only eurozone countries were required to pay. Under the system, Germany could be required to p...

"Citizens at the frontline are way down the list: the priority remains sorting out the banks to the best satisfaction of the banks"... When times are tough, choices must be made, priorities laid out. Last week, a film screened at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival showed what happens when such priorities pay scant attention to lives lived at the frontline of recession. Meeting Room is a documentary charting the rise and fall of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD) movement. CPAD was formed in 1982 to tackle the problem of drugs in inner city Dublin, where dealing and injecting were as common as little boys kicking football on the street. CPAD began with a meeting in Hardwicke Street, attended by, among others, Jesuit priest Jim Smyth. Pretty soon a plan of action was devised. Dealers would be asked to attend meetings of residents where they would be told to desist or leave the area immediately. If the dealers didn't show, the assembled marched on the off...

Don't blame us for 170,000 house surplus, say builders... BUILDERS yesterday denied that too many houses went up at the height of the boom -- insisting they built to the demand that existed. Hubert Fitzpatrick, director of housing and planning services at the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), made the comments after a new report claimed 170,000 more houses were built than were needed during the property bubble. The organisation is now calling on the Government to conduct a national audit to provide "accurate" data on the number of empty homes. It argues that a definitive account of the situation has not been presented -- because reports probing the issue are measuring housing stock in different ways. The latest report into housing published yesterday by University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) found a total of 345,000 homes -- or 17pc of all housing -- were currently lying empty. It said that even without considering holiday homes and...

The mortgage debt crisis in this country is much worse than the banks' official figures would have us believe... A report published two weeks ago by prestigious think tank Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the mortgage crisis here was unambiguous. For a dozen years, Irish house prices raced ahead at the fastest rate and for a longer time than anywhere else in the world. When the bubble burst in 2007, it left Irish households facing – along with the Dutch and the Danes – the highest family debts in the world. A bird's eye view of OECD housing markets by Christophe Andre reveals that Irish house prices since the 1970s were many times above the prices in Britain, Netherlands, Spain and France. Some years, several countries experienced house price booms simultaneously, said Andre, who defines a boom as prices having increased by 25% or more over five years. Doubling of household debt But since 1995, 13 countries of his sample of 17 countries simultaneously sho...

Nanny state's pension plan is bitter pill for most of us... NANNY Hanafin, assisted by the two Bossy Brians, was in full swing yesterday. Work for longer, get less tax relief and, by the way, if you are not in a pension we are going to sign you up for one whether you like it or not. Yes, the 'Nanny State' knows what is good for us and was not shy about telling us yesterday. Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin, have decided many of us have been naughty, not nice. So they have prescribed a full dose of pension punishment for all. Naughty workers who failed to take out a pension when the boom was in full flow will now be automatically signed up for one. This measure will not impact on those who are already in an occupational pension scheme and those in the public sector. All workers under the age of 62 will have to work for longer. Those under the age of 49 will end up having to wait until they are 68 be...

Over 33% of claims to relief scheme not paid... MORE THAN one-third of people who applied to the Government for emergency welfare support to help pay their mortgage last year did not receive a payment in 2009. Figures released by the Health Service Executive (HSE) show 13,469 of the 18,443 people who applied for mortgage interest supplement payments in 2009 were granted relief. The remaining 4,974 people were either refused support, withdrew their application or are still awaiting a response from community welfare officers. The scheme operates to provide support to people unable to meet their mortgage repayments due to a change in circumstances, such as loss of a job. Under the scheme, households receive an average of about €365 every month to help them cover part of their repayments. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people receiving mortgage interest supplements since the recession took hold. At the end of December 2009, the number of people availing of the scheme was 15,1...

Over 30,000 homeowners renegotiate mortgages... More than 30,000 struggling homeowners have negotiated alternative mortgage repayment options with banks and building societies in a bid to hold onto their homes, according to estimates from the Irish Banking Federation. A spokesman for the IBF said that mortgage customers in financial difficulty had negotiated a range of agreements with lenders, including payment breaks, longer mortgage terms and interest-only periods. ‘‘Things are difficult and people are under pressure, but it’s a case of picking up the phone and discussing the options with your lender in good faith," he said. The IBF will launch a new consumer guide to dealing with mortgage repayment difficulties this week. It recommends that mortgage customers in financial difficulty should contact their lender as soon as possible, and be sure to respond to letters or phone calls in relation to arrears. Under the statutory code of conduct on mortgage arrears, lenders must wait a...