Daft Property - Irish Property News

Only a miracle can save financial system from complete meltdown... MICHAEL Noonan talks the talk, but last Wednesday the only walking he did was backwards. It confirms that the EU is running the show. The light we saw flicker at the end of the tunnel has been blown out and is unlikely to be rekindled any time soon. The new Government had an opportunity to deliver on its election promises. It failed abysmally on one of the key issues. It didn't renegotiate the EU/IMF deal to withhold repayments to the senior bondholders, as promised. It might have been shot down in flames had it persisted with this approach. But it would have preserved its credibility at home. Its proposed bank reorganisation is a whitewash, and only intended to distract us from the cover-up of what is going on at the highest level in Europe. This is not totally unexpected, but it is very disappointing. Weeks before the general election Pat Rabbitte and Simon Coveney said, on separate occasions, that protectin...

Thousands of horses and ponies abandoned in Irish countryside as financial crisis bites... Tens of thousands of horses and ponies are believed to have been abandoned in the Irish countryside as families struggle to cope with the financial meltdown. Animal welfare inspectors have had to shoot some of the worst affected animals left badly weakened by exposure, starvation, sickness and injury. With costs of feeding or keeping the horses in stables running to £26 per day, generations who have kept horses as a passion have no longer been able to afford to keep them. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has pledged £12.8billion in spending cuts and tax increases over the next four years. The austerity measures are expected to lead to a 10 per cent cut in the disposable income of Ireland's middle class, and worse for those on lower incomes, leaving them without the funds to care for domestic pets. Irish law requires owners to have animals registered and microchipped, but it is not rigidly enf...

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, ...