Daft Property - Irish Property News

Cute hoor/fast buck gene to be removed from national herd... The Greens have done a complete about-turn and embraced genetic modification on a grand scale THE GREENS have embraced the concept of genetic modification, and with remarkable results. That’s a turn-up for the books. The party doesn’t do things by half measure. Their conversion isn’t down to some namby-pamby tinkering on the fringes of the allotment, or attempts to grow a pig from quorn. John Gormley, Eamon Ryan and their ecologically motivated Frankensteins have only gone and engineered a change to the basic genetic make-up of the Irish people. Using a secret procedure (which has been fully approved by their frightened partners in Government because they fear an agonising political death if they don’t), the party has succeeded in removing the cute hoor/fast buck gene from the national herd. “We’ve actually taken away that whole speculative impulse,” Eamon Ryan announced at a press conference yesterday. Thanks to new legislat

A group of 46 economists has signed an article in today’s Irish Times calling on the Government to reconsider the National Asset Management (Nama) project. They argue that Nama should pay the banks only the current market value for the loans it will assume. In response, economist Alan Ahearne, special adviser to Minster for Finance Brian Lenihan, said last night that a number of claims in the article were incorrect. He added that most of the economists in the country had not signed the article drafted by Prof Brian Lucey of Trinity College. Prof Lucey said he had contacted about 250 lecturers in economics and not one had come back to say they disagreed with the views expressed in his draft. He said a number did not sign because they did not want to get involved in a round-robin exercise. In the article, the economists say the Government will pay significantly above market value for the bad loans advanced by the banks. “The key difficulty facing the Government is that to pay prices now

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

Carroll's property empire crumbles... Fears of new turmoil in the market if banks move in... DEVELOPER Liam Carroll last night lost the battle to protect his multi-billion euro empire, raising fears the property market will be plunged into further turmoil. The Supreme Court rejected his survival plan -- saying it was neither credible nor viable. A number of banks are today expected to begin the process of picking over the bones of his companies, with a view to recouping a fraction of their losses. They will be led this morning by ACC Bank, who may seek to wind up his companies, appoint a liquidator or receivers. The tycoon's Zoe Group of companies is laden down with bank debts of more than €1.2bn -- and a fire sale of his assets could undermine the Government's NAMA plan to remove €90bn of toxic development loans from bank balance books. However, it is unlikely that there will be an immediate rush to sell off assets when there is no demand for in the current climate. Declan

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

Nama will bankrupt us for generations... The Government isn't just passing bad laws, it's putting us all in an economic strait-jacket.. . First, it's necessary to use this space to defend the banks. Over the past week, much of the criticism thrown at senior bankers was unmerited, and it would be unfair not to acknowledge that. It's a dirty job, defending those greedy bastards, but someone's got to do it. I can promise that normal service will be resumed shortly (within a few paragraphs, to be honest -- at which point we'll try to understand why we're now up to our chins in the rising tide of faeces that is Nama). The bankers got a bad rap because one bank, Permanent TSB ("The Bank That Likes to Say Feck Off"), increased interest rates. Other banks acknowledged they have similar intentions. Screams of horror issued from the media and politicians. Oh, dear -- it seems the banks are refusing to operate as social utilities. As though they believe that

Building a case for survival without a solid foundation... IN a certain fairytale, a vain emperor struts through the streets showing off his "new clothes". The adoring crowd applauds the naked emperor until a small child cries out: "But he has nothing on!" Yesterday, Judge Peter Kelly, head of the Commercial Court, gave short shrift to developer Liam Carroll's "fanciful" scheme to turn a €1bn-plus loss into a €300m profit in three years. Liam Carroll, a reclusive director of 203 companies, is the developer least likely to exhibit any degree of vanity. But he is naked. He is broke. His companies are insolvent. Not only insolvent, but so interconnected in a "byzantine" corporate structure that if one company falls, the empire does too. Carroll knows this. The Government knows this. Carroll's benign lenders, who are rolling up his interest with "great forbearance", know this. These are the same banks, incidentally, who are hammerin

NAMA: The €90bn gamble Sweeping powers for 'bad bank' 1,400 loans from 50 top developers THE Government last night gave its 'bad bank' sweeping powers over developers and judges as it unleashed a €90bn plan to rescue banks and kickstart the economy. But Finance Minister Brian Lenihan admitted it could take up to 30 years for the new National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to sort out the toxic bank assets. The State will effectively become one of the biggest property owners in the world as NAMA is granted extensive powers to take over land and development projects from borrowers who are not keeping up with their repayments. Among the more controversial provisions in the proposed new legislation -- described by Fine Gael as a massive gamble -- is a radical series of rules and procedures to ward off legal attacks that could be disastrous for taxpayers. But the plans, which include limited appeals to the Supreme Court and a clampdown on injunction proceedings, have alarmed

Government to publish Nama legislation today... The Government will today publish legislation setting up the controversial National Asset Management Agency (Nama), the State’s new toxic assets agency. The €90 billion “bad bank” scheme will use Government bonds to buy property loans at a discount from banks, which will then be able to cash the bonds with the European Central Bank. The draft legislation will be published at 5pm today on the Department of Finance website, but the Government intends to amend it next month when it is debated by the Oireachtas. The complex draft laws run to 150 pages and contains more than 200 sections. Nama will operate under the aegis of the National Treasury Management Agency. Banks will have one chance to appeal the price put on their loans by Nama to “a valuations panel”, which will advise the Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan, but the final decision will be his, the Department of Finance has said. Officials expect that loans to the 50 largest property

No Sniptoeing through the tulips for Brian's gang... Colm McCarthy was laid-back, but serving up his menu to a queasy public is going to strain Ministers’ stomachs... AFTER YEARS of high living, our political leaders arrived at the Café From Hell yesterday and were forced to confront a menu of the most foul and indigestible choices. The Taoiseach and his Ministers will have recoiled from the bill of fare, but they also know that if they don’t order and dispatch an ample sufficiency, the consequences for them and the rest of the country could be catastrophic. There’ll be no Sniptoeing through the tulips for Brian and the gang after the steaming mess of cuts that Colm McCarthy served up to their sophisticated noses. What’s worse, when they’ve properly perused what’s on offer, they’ll have to dish out McCarthy’s recommendations to an already queasy public. Will the Government have the stomach to do it? Brian Lenihan – the man who has to send out the plates – appealed for calm after th

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

We're gripped by collective stupefaction... We need more than a changing of the political guard...We need to take the axe to the nation's greedy elite WHEN the last of the Celtic Tiger cubs are basting in the St Stephen's Green sunshine like Sunday afternoon cooked chickens, it is hard to think revolutionary thoughts. Sadly, even as we noted that a government which has turned our economy into the Cuba of Europe could be forgiven if it did the same trick with the weather, the antics of our judges and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) swiftly brought us back to more normal dreams about the virtues of Jonathan Swift's wise suggestion that we should hang half a dozen bankers every year. While the hanging bit is a tad excessive, when it comes to numbers Mr Swift may actually have been too prescriptive -- for any bonfire of our Tiger nonentities should include a right good sprinkling of politicians, clerics, regulators, barristers, mandarins and social partners. Last week

IMF warns on extent of 'correction' facing State... THE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) painted a bleak picture of the “unprecedented economic correction” facing Ireland, describing the stress on the State as exceeding that being faced by any other developed nation. However, in a positive diagnosis of the Government’s response, the global financial watchdog has said that on the two fronts that matter most – fixing the banks and the public finances – the Government has “moved in the right direction”. The IMF said losses faced by Irish banks could top about €35 billion, or 20 per cent of GDP, to the end of 2010, though it added that the Government “did not formally produce any estimate for aggregate bank losses” during the fund’s recent fact-finding trip to Ireland. The Department of Finance was quick to point out that “the vast majority” of these losses would be absorbed by the banks’ risk capital and ongoing operating profits. The IMF endorsed the Government’s plans for the r

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

The justice minister's declaration on national television that the budget is merely a statement of intent confirms our worst fear: they don't mean what they say. If only they'd told us before... Mystery solved. We now know why Dermot Ahern found nothing on Ray Burke when he was up every tree in north Dublin. It's because he wasn't actually looking. One day long, long ago, the taoiseach summoned him to his office and said "Dermot, I want you to carry out an exhaustive investigation to establish once and for all if Rambo's been on the take from the builders." "Righto, boss," said the future minister for justice, and off he scampered to fetch his climbing boots. But not a whiff of a brown envelope did he detect among the abundant sycamores and great oaks of Swords and Malahide. Why? Because he kept his eyes closed all the time he was looking. Well, if Humpty Dumpty was your boss, would you take his instructions literally? Even pedantic, pettifo