Daft Property - Irish Property News

Emigration set to hit one-in-four city households... POLL: Quarter of young people want to leave. MORE than one in four Dublin households will experience emigration within the next 12 months. The scourge of forced emigration has yet to peak, a new poll of over 1,000 people has found. A major brain-drain is on the horizon as 23pc of young people aged 18-24 say that they intend to leave Ireland by early 2012. An analysis of the Millward Brown Lansdowne poll for the Herald shows that the exodus will include tradesmen, college graduates and other newly unemployed young people. Almost one in ten (9pc) people interviewed said they personally intend to emigrate within the year. And 20pc said another member of their household planned to move away to places like Australia, Canada or the US. More men than woman are ready to move overseas but those leaving are spread across all social classes. Around one in six are unemployed while one in eight are self-employed. The poll found ...

WHEN he first began his photographic project documenting the departure of young emigrants in early 2010, David Monahan had no way of knowing a mass exodus was about to take place. But with more than 65,000 emigrating from here last year alone, Mr Monahan’s project, Leaving Dublin, is tapping into the mood of a generation. The Dublin photographer first got the idea when talking to a young couple in their 20s — he was an electrician, she a beautician, and both have been out of work for a long time — who were leaving for Australia. From that one conversation, David decided to begin a series of shots which document emigration in modern Ireland. He advertised to photograph people of all nationalities, who had made the decision to move from Ireland for economic reasons. The pictures, which can be seen on davidmonahan.viewbook.com, are not just random images, but highly stylised and conceptualised shots which will form a series which Monahan hopes to display in a public arena which th...

Hard Times You know times are bad when you can overhear elderly ladies on the bus using phrases like “the current budget deficit,” as I did recently, on a pleasant autumn morning in Dublin. You know times are really bad when one of them just about knows the figure: “Oh, God, it’s 30 percent or something.” In fact, the Irish government’s deficit for 2010 hit 32 percent of GDP, more than 10 times the legal maximum for countries in the euro zone. It’s hard to find a parallel to such public excess anywhere in the Western world. The effects of our crisis are everywhere you look. The bus that morning was almost empty. Barely two years ago it would have been packed with Polish and Lithuanian hard hats, dressed in work boots and high-visibility jackets and heading for their construction jobs. Now many of the migrants have gone back home. Construction has halted, and much other work besides. Fine restaurants now offer three-course lunches for just €15. Newspaper lifestyle supplements are fu...

Surge in emigration as economic downturn takes toll... THE NUMBER of people moving to live in Australia, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Britain over the past year has increased sharply, reflecting a major surge in emigration due to the recession. New figures show Irish citizens have received 21 per cent more long-term resident visas for Australia, 49 per cent more New Zealand resident visas and 33 per cent more US immigrant visas. There has also been a 100 per cent increase in the number of Canadian work permits issued to Irish people and a significant increase in the number of similar visas issued for Australia. The number of people moving to Britain has risen by 2 per cent in 2010, which amounts to just under 1,000 Irish people moving to Britain every month to live. The figures from five of the most popular destinations for Irish emigrants are in line with recent data from Central Statistics Office, showing 65,300 people emigrated in the year to April 2010, the highest number leavin...

Big move is abroad as market stagnates... MASS EMIGRATION may be an unwelcome throwback to the past for many Irish people but for the removals industry the growing exodus of workers to far-flung destinations means business is booming once again. Some of the sector’s largest firms are reporting dramatic increases in the numbers of people moving lock, stock and barrel to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Most of these migrants are families who have cut their losses on property at home or are renting out their homes in the expectation of a return in three to five years’ time. Last month, a report from the EU Commission showed more people were leaving Ireland than anywhere else in the European Union and commentators attributed these rising emigration levels to departing non-nationals and young Irish males in search of better job prospects. But according to Eamonn Finn, of Allen Removals, the “overwhelming majority of clients are Irish families who have decided to move overseas per...

Irish emigration soars as Celtic Tiger’s cubs hunt for jobs... The number of people leaving the Republic has swelled far beyond those of every other country in the European Union, says research. An estimated 40,000 people emigrated last year, according to the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, a rate almost twice as high as that of Lithuania, the next most affected country. It is expected the flow may worsen as the Republic faces years of severe financial difficulties. A research institute has warned that 200,000 people, in a country of 4.5 million, may be forced to emigrate by 2015 if job opportunities do not improve. The unprecedented prosperity of the so-called Celtic Tiger years seemed to have consigned emigration to the history books. Its reappearance is regarded with dismay. Some of those leaving are thought to be immigrants who came to Ireland in large numbers from mainland Europe over the last decade and who, unable to find jobs, are returning home. But a large proportion a...

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...

Cuts, tax and emigration the harshest medicine... IT'S often been said that the best cure for poverty and unemployment is a job. But the reality of the modern Irish economy is that the best cure is emigration. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) said yesterday that 100,000 people would leave Ireland this year and next, keeping a lid on already high unemployment and helping to relieve some of the budgetary pressures on the Government. The loss of 100,000 mainly young people is hardly something to celebrate, but the reality is that without this safety valve the Irish economy would be mired in levels of unemployment last witnessed in the 1980s. The ESRI calculated yesterday that if the amount of people in the labour market had not fallen over the last year via emigration, the rate of unemployment would be about 16pc not the current 13.4pc. Ireland is shipping out its young people to countries like Canada, the US, Australia and the UK, thereby easing the pressure on the e...

'Ireland is a disaster . . . leave now and enjoy your life'... On these pages last week, Shane Fitzgerald, a young graduate of University College Dublin, wrote about the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise of a bright future in Ireland for him and his generation. Rather than draw the dole here, he left recession Ireland behind him – departing “these bankrupt shores” for London. His experience rang true for many online readers, some of whom reacted with strong antipathy towards our politicians. Here is an edited selection of how they see Ireland and its politicians. JAY: BORN and educated in Dublin, I emigrated to Canada in my 20s after working around the British Isles for a few years after graduation. My best advice, based on my very varied, interesting and relatively successful life filled with rich experiences and career choices, is to leave now and enjoy your life. Ireland is a disaster. It is sorely mismanaged and misruled and destroyed by its own absurdity. Ther...

St Patrick's Day revellers paint the town green... IT is the time of year again to don green garb, tune your fiddle and dance a merry jig. St Patrick's Day is upon us, and never mind if you aren't Irish. Don't think it's only Australians who go slightly mad in their celebrations. Practically the whole world claims Irish ancestry on March 17, all in the name of a good party. Besides, St Patrick himself wasn't Irish. What is St Patrick's Day? You could do worse than celebrate St Patrick's Day in Ireland, although traditionally the holy day was marked only by church and charity functions. In Dublin, there's now a week-long festival that includes street performances, a fun fair, treasure hunts, exhibitions and fireworks. In recent years celebrations have also been promoted in towns such as Cork, Limerick and Killarney. And in Galway, a St Patrick's Day parade meanders through the narrow cobbled streets and the town is filled with pipe bands, perform...

If you want to escape, it will cost you... Not so long ago, emigrants were paid to go to Australia -- today, it could cost a few grand to get into Oz...beating the downturn...the hidden cost emigrating to find work. WITH up to 300 jobs a day being lost in Ireland, anyone would be tempted to hop on a plane out of here. Although no country is likely to escape, Canada is expected to avoid the worst blows. Small wonder then that Canada is becoming a more popular place to emigrate to than in the past. Other favourites include Australia and New Zealand. Although the US and Britain have their fair share of recession blues, the traditional links between both countries and Ireland continues to draw Irish emigrants there. However, the cost of emigrating could burn a deep hole in your pockets. CANADA Home to the Rockies, the grizzly bear and the awkward moose, anyone emigrating to Canada certainly won't be hungry for the great outdoors -- but you could need almost €18,000 to enter the countr...

Towns feel pain as jobs vanish... Ireland's towns, once noisy with the sounds of construction, are ominously quiet, as people get to grips with a new reality and the prospect of emigration, writes Ronan McGreevy . A WEEK AFTER Leitrim were knocked out of the Connacht championship by Galway, the county captain, Gary McCloskey, emigrated to London. McCloskey, who was Leitrim player of the year in 2007, had been out of work for five weeks, having been made redundant by Shine Construction, based in Athlone. Shine, which had been involved in several projects in the midlands including the development of Athlone town's new stadium, blamed the downturn in the building sector for its closure in May. The firm had debts of €3.5 million and assets of just €990,000. Twenty others lost their jobs. "I had no work for five weeks," says McCloskey, a Trinity College graduate in civil engineering. "It came to a crunch and that's it - hop on a plane to London. It was easy, given...