Daft Property - Irish Property News

Time to raze the unfinished relics of the building boom... Ireland is about to witness a US-style degeneration of half- built housing schemes into ghost estates, says Juno McEnroe. FORMER US President Thomas Jefferson once said that small landholders are the most precious part of a state. In Ireland this phrase rang true during the boom with the first-time buyers and start-up investors who were encouraged to throw their cash into property. At one stage the property and construction sector made up over 20% of Government income. A precious pot for the State indeed. But just as Jefferson’s ideology of giving tracts of land to ordinary US citizens ended up benefiting greedy speculators, Ireland’s property investment schemes during the boom saw towns ravaged by sprawl, over-development and a plethora of ‘phantom’ or ‘ghost estates’ that now look unlikely ever to be finished . So it now looks as though the landholders will be the most worthless, or even the costliest, part of our esteemed st

We must demand greater accountability from politicians, regulators and business... PICTURE THE scene: greedy executives, shady solicitors, lying politicians, child- abusing priests, cover-ups, fraud and lots of brown envelopes. It sounds like an episode of US cops and corruption show The Wire, but it's actually the horrifying reality show known as Noughties Ireland . The first series of Noughties Ireland in 2007 delivered scheming property developers and government officials happy to look the other way . Series two featured a shamed taoiseach, several dodgy solicitors, the Fás scandal and questionable banking practices. This year's series sees paedophile priests and bishops who damn children to a lifelong personal hell. Fraud is also likely to make an appearance this year. Paddy Power is taking bets on which Irish sector will be charged with the biggest fraud in 2009. The odds favour banking, property and the legal sector , with telecoms and State/semi-State bodies next in line