Daft Property - Irish Property News

Ireland: Testing Times... How do we cope with recession? Valerie Shanley hears from leading experts and thinkers... In with the old, out with the new. But if we started 2008 as slightly mangy Celtic Tigers, who are we now as we venture a toe into 2009? The collapse in our economy has left an entire section of society feeling much poorer – especially those with big houses and share portfolios in Irish banks. Gone are the days when estate agents could tell you that the first thing new owners of a house should do on moving in was to rip out the designer kitchen the previous owners had only recently installed and replace it with another. Because gone are many of those estate agents. If the masters of no universe are having to re-evaluate the way they look at themselves, what about the rest of us? Even though most people were observers, as opposed to participants, in the ostentatious wealth of 'the boom', there was a positive, knock-on effect in confidence generally. Looking around,