Daft Property - Irish Property News

The Government, the EU and a great swindle... In a massive shafting of the Irish people, our own leaders and those in Europe threw away our democracy. Let's play a simple game. Let's put together three stories that emerged last week. And when we do this we will see, more clearly than ever, that we were royally screwed, that we are victims of one of the biggest stitch-ups perpetrated on a country since the heyday of colonialism in Africa. We were stitched up by an unholy alliance of our own Government and autonomous undemocratic institutions within the EU, who seem to be answerable to no one, and other institutions within the EU that are supposed to be answerable to us. Each of these stories, if you read them, will have angered and astounded you. But put the three of them together and you will be fit to be tied. Again. The great swindle begins with the European Commission. You probably don't know exactly what the European Commission is. You are vaguely aware that it

Irish property could still be overvalued by 30 percent... Irish house prices increased by around 330 per cent between 1996 to 2007 – a bubble of impressive scale and duration, but a bubble nonetheless. Plenty of outside observers saw the writing on the wall and said so, but they were overlooked in the Celtic Tiger gold rush. The European Central Bank (ECB), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Financial Times, the Economist and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) all spoke of dire portents early and often. They were ignored. Cheap and easy money arrived in Ireland just as the tiger economy geared up. The country adopted the euro and access to a large pool of low-cost European finance with it. When the bubble burst Ireland's main domestic financial institutions were wiped out and European institutions and the IMF took over the nation's financial affairs. So the question now is has the country reached the end? According to a report i

Brian Lenihan tells the Irish bailout story on Radio 4... The inside story of Ireland's unprecedented economic bailout is revealed in Bailout Boys Go to Dublin, a new documentary on BBC Radio 4. In his first major interview since the last November's bailout, former Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan recalls his feelings as he prepared to sign up to the 85bn euro (£75bn) bailout - a deal which would end Ireland's economic sovereignty. "I have a very vivid memory of going to Brussels on the final Monday and being on my own at the airport and looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself: this is terrible. No Irish minister has ever had to do this before," he says. "I had fought for two and a half years to avoid this conclusion. I believed I had fought the good fight and taken every measure possible to delay such an eventuality and now hell was at the gates". Dan O'Brien, the economics editor of the Irish Times, tells the stor