Daft Property - Irish Property News

EU Commission throws cold water on hopes worst of budget crisis over... THE EU Commission yesterday took on the role of the man who blew out the light at the end of the tunnel. Tuesday was a good day in terms of the public finances. The Government, through the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), managed to borrow €1bn at the lowest interest rates since December 2008, when compared with equivalent German rates. The head of the NTMA suggested the gap between Irish and German interest rates on government debt could be less than 1pc by the end of the year. Any sane person not still living in bubble land would regard that as an eminently reasonable "spread", given the differences between the two economies. But the commission threw a large bucket of cold water on any flickering hopes that the worst of the budget crisis was over. In its formal report on the public finances of 14 EU states, it warned that the tough Irish budgetary plans, over which so much anger and anguish h...

We've never had it so bad, ESRI warns... Recession worst since the 1930s, think-tank reveals IRELAND is suffering the worst recession of any advanced country since the 1930s, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) warns in a grim analysis of the economy. Unemployment could rise above 500,000 as national income (GNP) is forecast to fall by 14pc over the three years from 2008 to 2010. The fall in national income beats the 11pc decline in the Finnish crisis of 1990 to 1993, when the collapse of the Soviet Union suddenly deprived Finland of its main market. The ESRI believes this year will be the worst of the crisis, with income per person plunging by more than 9pc in real terms. But there will be further decline next year, with a 1.2pc fall in national income. The stark outline comes as new figures will today show that the rate of increase in unemployment has slowed, but that 384,000 people are signing on. The CSO statistics reveal that an additional 11,000 signed on the li...