Daft Property - Irish Property News

Nama turns us into a nation of speculators... OPINION: Builders and developers have finally managed to shape the country in their own image... THE DRAFT National Asset Management Agency (Nama) legislation runs to 136 pages, so it’s not too surprising that most people have missed the interesting section 201. It reads as follows: 201.1: Henceforth, all male children shall be called Seán, Seánie, Paddy, Mick, Tom, Joe, Gerry, Liam or Bernard. All female children shall be christened Seona, Patricia, Michaela, Tomasina, Josephine, Geraldine, Wilma or Bernadine and shall be referred to de facto as Seán, Seánie, Paddy, Mick, Tom, Joe, Gerry, Liam or Bernard. 201.2: From the coming into force of this legislation, all citizens shall be required to receive a daily dosage of testosterone and cocaine to induce feelings of competitive aggression and megalomaniacal omnipotence. 201.3: All male citizens shall wear a pink shirt as a declaration that said citizen is so macho that he can wear pink and n...

Building a case for survival without a solid foundation... IN a certain fairytale, a vain emperor struts through the streets showing off his "new clothes". The adoring crowd applauds the naked emperor until a small child cries out: "But he has nothing on!" Yesterday, Judge Peter Kelly, head of the Commercial Court, gave short shrift to developer Liam Carroll's "fanciful" scheme to turn a €1bn-plus loss into a €300m profit in three years. Liam Carroll, a reclusive director of 203 companies, is the developer least likely to exhibit any degree of vanity. But he is naked. He is broke. His companies are insolvent. Not only insolvent, but so interconnected in a "byzantine" corporate structure that if one company falls, the empire does too. Carroll knows this. The Government knows this. Carroll's benign lenders, who are rolling up his interest with "great forbearance", know this. These are the same banks, incidentally, who are hammerin...

Where do we go from here? As the State stepped in this week to avert a collapse of the Irish banking system, Joe and Mary citizen were left pondering a very uncertain future ... ' WE ARE WHERE we are . It's time to move on. Just do the vote. Just . . . just get it done. Okay?" blustered a Wall Street trader last Monday, minutes after the US Congress rejected the $700 billion (€505 billion) bailout for the banks. The CNN interviewer persisted with a question about the rage bubbling under Main Street USA. The tetchy trader ignored it. "We are where we are," he repeated. "It's time to move on. Just do the vote." Sound familiar? It should. The mantra was snapped up on this side of the Atlantic this week and used to quell the rabble demanding that the Irish masters of the universe be made to account for themselves before Ireland Inc's reputation was sold to save their necks. "Listen. We are where we are," snapped one cheerleader dismissivel...

BBC panel discuss the ramifications of the passing of the $700 billion 'Bailout Bill' in the US, and the impact that will be felt in Europe and the Middle East...