Daft Property - Irish Property News

Number of homeowners in arrears soars to 50,000... THE number of homeowners in arrears on their mortgages has jumped by 5,100 to almost 50,000 in the first three months of the year. The arrears figure represents 6.3pc of the 782,429 residential mortgage accounts, according to the Central Bank. Meanwhile, another 36,600 homeowners, who are not in arrears, have made arrangements with their lender to reduce their repayments. This means that a total of 86,211 homeowners -- 11pc of all mortgage-holders -- were struggling to meet their repayments in March, the Central Bank said. While the trend is worrying, eight out of every nine mortgage holders are still meeting their original repayment commitments. Frank Conway of personal finance website MoneyCoach added that although the growth in the arrears was unfortunate, there was no rapid deterioration in the rise in rate of arrears. "These latest statistics largely include the effects of the introduction of the universal socia

The Metro is an insane idea -- and a disaster for Dublin... We've been bombarded with cataclysmic figures for the past two years, all of which related to financial obligations caused by our past blunders. Many of you were clearly unaware that the Metro represents an entirely voluntary leap into a fresh and cataclysmic debt that could bring disaster to Dublin. Now, no one would back a plan to build a huge coal-fired power station that had been conceived before global warming. So why is this technically bankrupt State hoping to build an underground rail link from St Stephen's Green to Dublin Airport which was conceived before the financial meltdown? We are borrowing €20bn a year merely to run the State and to pay civil servants' salaries and pensions. And yet we still propose to build the Metro? This is not rational behaviour, but akin to the conduct of an alcoholic who has foresworn alcohol totally -- apart, that is, from the open-ended credit-card account with Tesco wines,