Daft Property - Irish Property News

Cowen accepts the bailout but not the responsibility... As a result of an ill-judged edit, viewers of the national broadcaster missed the liveliest and most telling part of the press conference held tonight at Government Buildings by the current Taoiseach Brian Cowen and the current Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan. TV3 host and Irish Times columnist Vincent Browne asked Cowen if he accepted that he was to blame for “screwing up the country”; that he more than anyone else was responsible for Ireland’s economic catastrophe and that his continued presence in office was “a liability” to the nation. “I don’t accept that at all,” replied Cowen, grumpily. “I don’t accept your contention [or] the premise to your question that I’m the bogeyman you’re looking for.” Minutes earlier, a Bloomberg television journalist who asked if Cowen had ever thought of packing it in was told that the process of electing a Taoiseach was a parliamentary matter… mumble, jargon, mumble. As for whether or not he ...

Be prepared for a double whammy of property and water levies... PROPERTY tax isn't going away -- and it might be introduced at the same time as water charges. Homeowners who thought they would be spared the controversial taxes for the foreseeable future have been told that they are still firmly on the Government's Budget agenda. As the Cabinet prepared to meet for its final session before the summer break, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern reignited the debate over domestic taxes. It had been believed that property tax would be shelved, despite the Government's need to make a €3bn adjustment in December's budget. But yesterday, Mr Ahern said: "That may include a property tax and charging for water - which are in every other European country." Dragged He also warned that low paid workers could be dragged back into the tax net. "There's a relatively small percentage of people who are paying tax. But 50pc of people are not paying a bob of tax. That is not su...

How Cowen took a €440bn shot in dark... Government snub for own advisers: THE Government was in the dark about the true scale of the banks’ massive losses when it ignored its own advisers and pushed ahead with a €440bn blanket state guarantee. Losses at the banks have ended up being double the amount the Department of Finance assumed at the time of the bailout. The €440bn bailout was undertaken on the basis that the banks had assets of €500bn. But in reality these assets were worth far less because of the property crash. If the guarantee was called in at any time, taxpayers would face colossal losses that would dwarf the banking bill to date. The startling revelations are revealed in newly released documents from a Dail committee investigating the banking crisis. The documents revealed: ● Contingency plans to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide were in place before the controversial guarantee was agreed on September 29. ● A special lending scheme proposed by advisers Merr...

Budget 2010: Brian's bitter pill... FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan yesterday chose to avoid new income taxes by instead slashing social welfare payments and public sector pay. But he insisted "the worst is over" after delivering his third Budget in 14 months. However, there is plenty more pain to come as Mr Lenihan last night revealed plans to achieve €2bn more in cutbacks in 2011 through water charges, a property tax and public sector reforms. The Government is also planning a radical overhaul of the PRSI, income and health levy system, which will also widen the tax base. Mr Lenihan cut €4bn from spending in Budget 2010 and introduced carbon taxes and stealth charges in the health sector. But his Budget was branded as lacking fairness as it hit those on low incomes in the public sector and those dependent on social welfare. The salaries of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his ministers were reduced by 20pc and 15pc respectively -- but this included the previous 10pc voluntary c...

Pressure on State to stop repossession of homes... There is a "substantial" number of new mortgage holders who should never have been approved for the amount of money they borrowed and repossession orders should not be granted to their lenders, proposals to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and the Oireachtas committee have urged. A group, whose aim is finding a way to assist thousands of families who face the "very real threat" of losing their homes because of mortgage arrears, said the terms of loans should be amended to what the borrower can afford. The Prevention of Family Home Repossession Group has made submissions to Mr Lenihan and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and Public Service on a variety of measures to deal with the problem. They have also warned that many families will find themselves in a poverty trap with a deteriorating economy, spiralling unemployment and the prospect of interest rate rises . "This has the potential to lead to catastro...

For God's sake get a move on... THE message from the OECD is clear. Translated into the vernacular, it is: "For God's sake, get a move on, lads" The secretary general of the helpful international body warned that cuts in public spending should begin immediately. In other words, the idea that a restructuring, spread over three to five years, would solve the crisis in the public finances is misguided. Mr Angel Gurria was probably too diplomatic to say as much in public. Instead, he looked Brian Lenihan in the eye and told him: "The problem is that you may not have time, Mr Minister . . . The markets are zeroing in on countries." The "markets" are loaning this country €2bn a month so that the Government's pay cheques for public and civil servants will not bounce, and so that the 160,000 private sector workers who have been thrown out of work in the past year will at least have some euro to buy food for their families. Yesterday's lowering of I...

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...

Fears raised over stamp duty issue... REACTION: ESTATE AGENTS fear the struggling second-hand housing market may well grind to a halt after the disclosure that stamp duty may be abolished and replaced with an annual property tax. The Government will be under pressure to clarify whether it plans to implement proposals by the Commission on Taxation in the December budget, having already signalled that it it may not proceed with the property tax. Buyers who may be tempted by heavily discounted prices in second-hand houses will be reluctant to make commitments until the stamp duty issue is clarified. The report comes at a time when house sales were beginning to pick up at the opening of the autumn selling season. However, agents last night warned that activity could cease until the Government indicated whether it would proceed with the taxation changes. The Irish Auctioneers Valuers Institute (IAVI), which represents about 1,700 estate agents, last night urged Minister for Finance Brian Le...

A group of 46 economists has signed an article in today’s Irish Times calling on the Government to reconsider the National Asset Management (Nama) project. They argue that Nama should pay the banks only the current market value for the loans it will assume. In response, economist Alan Ahearne, special adviser to Minster for Finance Brian Lenihan, said last night that a number of claims in the article were incorrect. He added that most of the economists in the country had not signed the article drafted by Prof Brian Lucey of Trinity College. Prof Lucey said he had contacted about 250 lecturers in economics and not one had come back to say they disagreed with the views expressed in his draft. He said a number did not sign because they did not want to get involved in a round-robin exercise. In the article, the economists say the Government will pay significantly above market value for the bad loans advanced by the banks. “The key difficulty facing the Government is that to pay prices now ...

Let's try it the French way... It is in the nature of all politicians to give hostages to fortune. So we can't really hold it against Brian Lenihan that he once, by his own account, deputising for Brian Cowen, went to Brussels and said: "Nous cherchons le soft landing." There is a scene in True Confessions (the film from John Gregory Dunne's novel) where seedy New York cop Robert Duvall raids a whorehouse, and one prostitute, in an effort to save her own skin, squeals: "Hey officer, not me. I do awful good French." As we try to drag our bruised bottoms up off the cold, hard landing, we may yet be grateful that our Finance Minister does awful good French. The French, you see, have turned it around (no joke intended). Along with the Germans, their economy grew between April and June, while ours plummeted into an abyss. And there was nothing laissez-faire about it either. They began with the same problems as the rest of us. They had negative growth, they ha...

A nation in crisis, politicians invisible... POLL: Seventy-four per cent want Dail to be recalled immediately: The public is demanding that politicians come off holiday following the publication last week of the worst mid-summer economic data in living memory. Almost four months after the Government introduced an emergency Budget designed to stabilise the economy, exchequer figures show that the situation is getting perilously worse. Since that Budget on April 7, tax revenue has continued to decline at an alarming rate and current spending has continued to increase unchecked. The result is that the budget deficit has widened dramatically in a month, by almost €2bn, at a time when the Government had hoped it would reduce following its imposition of painful income and pension levies and tax increases. On top of that, Live Register figures, also published last week, show that almost 350 people a day are now losing their jobs . Politicians, meanwhile, are on holiday, with no intention of r...

Nama will bankrupt us for generations... The Government isn't just passing bad laws, it's putting us all in an economic strait-jacket.. . First, it's necessary to use this space to defend the banks. Over the past week, much of the criticism thrown at senior bankers was unmerited, and it would be unfair not to acknowledge that. It's a dirty job, defending those greedy bastards, but someone's got to do it. I can promise that normal service will be resumed shortly (within a few paragraphs, to be honest -- at which point we'll try to understand why we're now up to our chins in the rising tide of faeces that is Nama). The bankers got a bad rap because one bank, Permanent TSB ("The Bank That Likes to Say Feck Off"), increased interest rates. Other banks acknowledged they have similar intentions. Screams of horror issued from the media and politicians. Oh, dear -- it seems the banks are refusing to operate as social utilities. As though they believe that ...

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...

NAMA: The €90bn gamble Sweeping powers for 'bad bank' 1,400 loans from 50 top developers THE Government last night gave its 'bad bank' sweeping powers over developers and judges as it unleashed a €90bn plan to rescue banks and kickstart the economy. But Finance Minister Brian Lenihan admitted it could take up to 30 years for the new National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to sort out the toxic bank assets. The State will effectively become one of the biggest property owners in the world as NAMA is granted extensive powers to take over land and development projects from borrowers who are not keeping up with their repayments. Among the more controversial provisions in the proposed new legislation -- described by Fine Gael as a massive gamble -- is a radical series of rules and procedures to ward off legal attacks that could be disastrous for taxpayers. But the plans, which include limited appeals to the Supreme Court and a clampdown on injunction proceedings, have alarmed...

Government to publish Nama legislation today... The Government will today publish legislation setting up the controversial National Asset Management Agency (Nama), the State’s new toxic assets agency. The €90 billion “bad bank” scheme will use Government bonds to buy property loans at a discount from banks, which will then be able to cash the bonds with the European Central Bank. The draft legislation will be published at 5pm today on the Department of Finance website, but the Government intends to amend it next month when it is debated by the Oireachtas. The complex draft laws run to 150 pages and contains more than 200 sections. Nama will operate under the aegis of the National Treasury Management Agency. Banks will have one chance to appeal the price put on their loans by Nama to “a valuations panel”, which will advise the Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan, but the final decision will be his, the Department of Finance has said. Officials expect that loans to the 50 largest property ...

No Sniptoeing through the tulips for Brian's gang... Colm McCarthy was laid-back, but serving up his menu to a queasy public is going to strain Ministers’ stomachs... AFTER YEARS of high living, our political leaders arrived at the Café From Hell yesterday and were forced to confront a menu of the most foul and indigestible choices. The Taoiseach and his Ministers will have recoiled from the bill of fare, but they also know that if they don’t order and dispatch an ample sufficiency, the consequences for them and the rest of the country could be catastrophic. There’ll be no Sniptoeing through the tulips for Brian and the gang after the steaming mess of cuts that Colm McCarthy served up to their sophisticated noses. What’s worse, when they’ve properly perused what’s on offer, they’ll have to dish out McCarthy’s recommendations to an already queasy public. Will the Government have the stomach to do it? Brian Lenihan – the man who has to send out the plates – appealed for calm after th...

TDs 'cut and run' as 3,000 jobs a week lost Action on Bord Snip to be delayed as public sector gears for the fight... The silent destruction of the real economy will continue virtually unchecked for a further six months, during which time TDs will enjoy a three-month summer holiday and the Government will prepare to re-run the Lisbon Treaty referendum. In that six months, a further 100,000 jobs will be lost, bringing to an unprecedented 500,000 the number of private sector workers now out of work -- a staggering 90 per cent increase in just a single year of an unrelenting economic crisis . The report of the Expenditure Review Committee, also known as An Bord Snip Nua, has now been submitted in draft form to various Government departments. It makes recommendations in relation to cuts of up to €5bn in current spending to eliminate a deficit of €15bn, of which €6bn relates to bailing out the banks. The report will be officially presented to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan on Wednes...

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...

Does this finally mean bye-bye to Bertieland? Just because Brian Cowen et al are proclaiming the end of crony capitalism doesn't mean it's dead yet... They do things differently in Sweden. Up there, they pull together in crisis. They show a united face to the outside world when the chips are down. They are ideal candidates for a social solidarity pact. Out here on the far side of Bertieland, we don't have the stomach for such happy-clappy stuff. On Wednesday, Brian Lenihan announced details for the National Asset Management Agency, or, if you will, the bad bank. This agency will take control of the property assets in the country's main banks, thus freeing up the banks to lend money to businesses. The book value of the assets, most of which are toxic, is estimated at €80bn to €90bn. Nobody knows the real value of the assets because at the moment, as nothing is selling, there is no market in which to put a price on them. The process is designed to clean up the horrendous ...

Will your lifestyle survive?... THE GARDA and the Army have been refreshing their riot-control skills in recent times. Clearly, the fear is that the Irish might emulate their French and Greek counterparts and stage a peasants’ revolt. But even Opposition party members are taken aback by the “rather eerie silence” around the constituencies in the wake of the emergency Budget ... “The only flashpoint was the Pat Kenny show with Brian Lenihan,” says one Fine Gaeler. That programme featured a 51-year-old teacher on €63,000 who stood to lose €800-€900 a month. Although she might be considered better off than most, she claimed to understand “how people go home and hang themselves”. The main sense was an absence of hope. Some households stood to lose a third of their income, yet there was no sign of economic stimulus. And what was it all for? As Caroline, a mother of four, told The Irish Times : “It’s to pay for the smart gambles hatched in the Galway tent. And the only hope they can offer u...