Daft Property - Irish Property News

Ireland’s choice: €4bn in cuts or IMF... THE Government has raised the spectre of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) coming in to run the country if people don’t accept the savage €4 billion of cuts to be imposed in the December budget. Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his Cabinet colleagues have launched a PR offensive to soften people up for the cutbacks, saying the black hole in the public finances was unsustainable . Mr Cowen said everybody would have to make a contribution to help solve the crisis "according to their means". Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Ireland would face "ruin" if action wasn’t taken to get the national debt under control . Green Party leader and Environment Minister John Gormley said there was no point misleading people about how difficult the budget would be. And Health Minister Mary Harney warned that if the Government didn’t take the necessary tough decisions, the IMF would do so instead. "We’re currently spending €500m a week more...

We're gripped by collective stupefaction... We need more than a changing of the political guard...We need to take the axe to the nation's greedy elite WHEN the last of the Celtic Tiger cubs are basting in the St Stephen's Green sunshine like Sunday afternoon cooked chickens, it is hard to think revolutionary thoughts. Sadly, even as we noted that a government which has turned our economy into the Cuba of Europe could be forgiven if it did the same trick with the weather, the antics of our judges and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) swiftly brought us back to more normal dreams about the virtues of Jonathan Swift's wise suggestion that we should hang half a dozen bankers every year. While the hanging bit is a tad excessive, when it comes to numbers Mr Swift may actually have been too prescriptive -- for any bonfire of our Tiger nonentities should include a right good sprinkling of politicians, clerics, regulators, barristers, mandarins and social partners. Last week...

The justice minister's declaration on national television that the budget is merely a statement of intent confirms our worst fear: they don't mean what they say. If only they'd told us before... Mystery solved. We now know why Dermot Ahern found nothing on Ray Burke when he was up every tree in north Dublin. It's because he wasn't actually looking. One day long, long ago, the taoiseach summoned him to his office and said "Dermot, I want you to carry out an exhaustive investigation to establish once and for all if Rambo's been on the take from the builders." "Righto, boss," said the future minister for justice, and off he scampered to fetch his climbing boots. But not a whiff of a brown envelope did he detect among the abundant sycamores and great oaks of Swords and Malahide. Why? Because he kept his eyes closed all the time he was looking. Well, if Humpty Dumpty was your boss, would you take his instructions literally? Even pedantic, pettifo...