Daft Property - Irish Property News

The property bubble was partly fuelled by political and regulatory mistakes, education minister Batt O’Keeffe has admitted. Addressing the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) conference and dinner last Friday night, O’Keeffe said that those in positions of leadership in the construction industry had the ‘‘opportunity to help shape the future of the sector in a way that acknowledges the mistakes of the past’’. He listed those mistakes as ‘‘the failure of the Central Bank and Financial Regulator to properly control lending practices and the failure of the private sector, including developers and bankers, in amassing wealth without adequately considering the longer term implications’’. He also admitted to a ‘‘failure of politicians to curb a culture of one-upmanship and target-driven greed in the banking and property sectors’’. O’Keeffe said that the annual construction industry review and outlook, to be published this week, ‘‘will not make for happy reading’’. It will show that almost

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

It's time to give Lisbon lies the red card... Michael O'Leary might be an obnoxious prat, but you have to give him credit for his hard neck. When Michael is trying to put one over he just looks you right in the eye and delivers his baloney with a wink and a smile. Perhaps experience has taught him that few are immune to his brand of leprechaun charm. "Hey, begob, sure 'tis only me, Mickey O -- pulling another fast one on ye, so I am!" If we're going to be smothered in bullshit in the weeks to come (and we are, dear reader, we bloody are), at least O'Leary's variety provides a degree of entertainment -- and we'll get to Mick's bullshit in a moment. There's a blizzard of the stuff headed our way, the intent being to leave us overwhelmed, jaded and ready to obediently swallow not one but two bitter pills prescribed by Mr Cowen's government. Nama is the bigger of the bitter pills -- it's approximately the size of a grand piano -- a mass

The elements that today might form a national culture – language, religion, nationalism – are no longer so readily identifiable here, where the effect of Tiger affluence was not individualism but conformism... THINGS ARE often studied only when they start to go wrong. The end of things is the moment when we start to understand them: and only when they are understood do we begin to realise what might be lost. For instance, sociology emerged as a discipline in that era when society was no longer felt to fit like a glove. Perhaps the fairly recent development of Irish Studies on campuses is less a cause for celebration than a warning: that the identities which it sponsored were, in effect, being codified before their possible eclipse. Such fears have, of course assailed Irish people long before now. After the defeat at Kinsale, the poets of the 1600s proclaimed the collapse of Gaelic Ireland, but in lines of such throbbing vitality as to rebut that very thesis. A tradition lived on in the

We're facing worst crisis in history of State... FORMER president Mary Robinson yesterday warned the Government that the country is in the grip of possibly the worst crisis in the history of the State. She bluntly told the country's leaders that a lack of a vision of ourselves "lies at the heart of the crises we face" and warned that it was vital that example now come from the top and that the vulnerable be protected. The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday became the first former president to deliver the General Michael Collins oration at Beal na mBlath in west Cork. Her speech centred on the scale of the crisis facing Ireland and how those in positions of power should deal with it. "Challenges of this magnitude demand not only detailed solutions but a comprehensive vision of what sort of society we want to see emerge from our current difficulties. "The likelihood is that, in the absence of a vision of our future which enjoys broad suppor

Why do we always get things wrong? I know, it's the Brits, the Brits, the Brits... As this State flounders towards collapse again, let's ask: why do we always get things wrong? Sure, I know three reliable answers: the Brits, the Brits and the Brits again. Indeed, entire university faculties are given over to discourses on Hibernian victimhood, with self-pity intellectualised through the impenetrable verbal mud of Foucault, Derrida and Fanon. This whingeing school of thought has an academic brand name, Field Day, and a caste of articulate laureates who specialise in the plaints of our woebegone Irish identity . Yet no one considers the possibility that there might be something genetically askew with too many Irish people for us to create an ordered, predictable society that does not fall apart every 15 years or so. So, has our still-small population been cursed with some genetic fault from our founding population which came from Spain 4,000 years ago? A baleful genetic legacy ne

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

Thousands seeking help as debts surge... THE number of people turning to a Government money advice service to save themselves from financial ruin will double this year. In response, the Government has been forced to hire a new team of advisers to bolster the under-staffed Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS). Despite the public sector recruitment ban, the Department of Finance has given the green light for a team of new recruits. The extent of indebtedness emerged as it was revealed that up to 500 ESB and Bord Gais customers were being disconnected every month because they could not afford to pay their bills. Stark new Department of Social and Family Affairs figures reveal: * The MABS helpline received more than 12,200 calls in the first six months of 2009. This compares with almost 11,000 for all of last year. * MABS staff have been visited by almost 10,000 new clients -- owing an average of €15,100 -- since the beginning of the year. * The vast majority of the debt (65p

Nobody is laughing as nation gets left in lurch... We are at the brink of being ungovernable as our absentee political class flee the Dail... This may have been the week where the political establishment was caught with its trousers down around its ankles but nobody is laughing. It is not often these days that Leinster House is a catalyst for Christmas images but there was more than a small element of that much loved children's poem 'The Night Before Christmas' surrounding the latest Dail debacle. On 'black Wednesday' the worst exchequer figures in the history of the State were announced, but in the Dail 'not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse'. One supposes we shouldn't have expected anything better. Those absentee Ascendancy landlords who allowed Ireland to rot during the great famine may be one of the most reviled groups in Irish history but, as the economy experiences its worst shock since the famine, it appears as though we have our own home-

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

Learning from the credit crunch. NEXT MONTH marks the second anniversary of the “credit crunch”, the global financial crisis which has led to the worst economic downturn Ireland has experienced in a century... However, these experiences can be put to good use by informing future investment decisions. While the most obvious lesson to be learnt from the crisis is that nothing is certain and anything is possible – who could have predicted that Anglo would be nationalised – there are basic investment fundamentals that got lost during the boom years that should be borne in mind. 1 Diversify, diversify, diversify: Diversification, whereby you spread your investments across asset types, industries and economies, is a fundamental investment technique aimed at reducing risk and increasing long-term returns. During the celtic tiger, when Irish property prices soared and bank stocks led the Iseq to boom, investors were loath to spread their investments away from the Irish economy. That has resul

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

Family fortunes fall €43,000 in two years... THE average family has lost €43,000 in the value of its pensions, shares, bank deposits and other assets in just two years, shocking new official figures reveal. At the height of the boom, in 2006, the average household had financial assets worth €95,200, but this has now nearly halved to just €51,500 today. The huge fall is highlighted in figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). It comes as workers have been hit hard by the introduction of savage income levies and pay cuts. The scale of the destruction of household assets is unprecedented in the history of the State. The losses arise from a sharp fall in the value of pensions, insurance policies, shares and bank deposits, according to the CSO. Stock market collapses over the past year have meant that almost all those with private pensions are now nursing huge losses. The only good news has come from a fall in prices – particularly mortgage costs. Collectively, the 1.5 million hous

We will have to pay for excesses of the past... RECENT economic reports have a hint of desperation about them as they struggle to suggest the battered economy will revive in two years time. The bit between 2009 and 2010 is being glossed over, as the economy is expected to plunge to its worst recession ever in modern history . If it’s true, the 9-10% fall in output this year is from a high base and even if growth reverts back to 2005 levels then that would be no bad thing. That was the year before we built a record 96,000 houses and employment doubled towards 2 million over a 10-year period. That’s all positive, but the reality check still has to kick in. One report from West Cork suggests house prices in some areas are in desperate trouble. One source has reported that 10 houses built in 2007, achieved prices of €400,000, some bought with €390,000 mortgages. But as the market tanked, unsold houses were bought for €180,000, leaving many in negative equity territory. It is also a fact th

Economist says 15pc chance of country going bankrupt... CUTTING the Irish minimum wage is an "economic no-brainer" while social welfare rates must also be tackled to kick the economy back into gear, a senior official at the Economist Intelligence Unit said yesterday. Economist Dan O'Brien also gave the Irish state a 15pc change of "going bankrupt" in the next year, a bleak outlook that comes just a month after ratings agency Fitch gave the country a 1.5pc chance of defaulting over the next decade. Mr O'Brien was addressing the AGM lunch of small business lobby group ISME, which had just voted in Kildare accountant Eilis Quinlan as their next chairman. Asked by Friends First economist Jim Power for his views on the lowering of the minimum wage, Mr O'Brien described the move as an "open and shut case from an economic point of view". Ireland's minimum wage, at €8.65, is the second highest in Europe. "You only have to look at the competit

How our young will get through the recession... BASICS: Sewing and baking is key... THE younger generation is being urged to get back to basics and learn the long forgotten skills of sewing, baking and fending for themselves in a series of classes to be held in Dublin city. Celebrity chef Darina Allen recently said that elderly people have the know-how to cope with limited budgets, but those in younger age groups may find it difficult to survive in the recession. Helpless "People have been so focused on careers and academia that they are helpless when they lose their jobs," she said. "They don't have money and they realise they don't have skills that would help them through. "From a small budget, grandmothers were able to feed the family," she added. "They could look in the fridge and make a meal out of all sorts of little scraps . That is a skill that's lost - being able to judge it yourself when food is safe to eat and when it is not. It'

How greed is the rot at society's dying core... OPINION: A PAIR of travel-worn slippers, a brass bowl and plate, round-rimmed glasses and an old pocket watch recently fetched a whopping $1.8 million at a New York auction. The memorabilia constituted just about all the earthly possessions of Mahatma Gandhi, the man Churchill infamously described as the “naked fakir” or beggar. Coincidentally, on the anniversary of the death of Gandhi, who epitomised austerity and simplicity, Seán Quinn, Ireland’s richest man, admitted in an RTÉ interview following the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank to feeling that “we were too greedy” ... It may well be deemed a collective admission from all of us, who in varying degrees, have brought on this global recession. Topping the list will be those whose greed has subsumed the hopes and dreams of generations, to the extent where radio shows that hitherto dished up discussions on caviare and champagne are recommending snail and nettle soup as its recession fla

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