Daft Property - Irish Property News

The Republic's budget targets remain on track despite the country being €10bn in the red, the Government said last night. Latest exchequer figures show €17.2bn taxes were collected in the first seven months of the year - 1.4% or €247m below target. Separate figures revealed the Irish economy shrunk 7.6% last year. Fine Gael claimed the country had suffered the longest and deepest recession of any advanced economy in the world. Richard Bruton, enterprise spokesman, said the rate of economic decline was five times worse than the average fall suffered by advanced countries. "Despite all the evidence and the conclusions of the recent banking reports, some Government ministers continue to pretend that Ireland's problems were caused by outside forces, when the truth is that Ireland and its people have been the victims of catastrophic economic mismanagement," Mr Bruton said. The exchequer deficit at the end of July was €10.2bn, down from the €16.4bn recorded at the same per

Be prepared for a double whammy of property and water levies... PROPERTY tax isn't going away -- and it might be introduced at the same time as water charges. Homeowners who thought they would be spared the controversial taxes for the foreseeable future have been told that they are still firmly on the Government's Budget agenda. As the Cabinet prepared to meet for its final session before the summer break, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern reignited the debate over domestic taxes. It had been believed that property tax would be shelved, despite the Government's need to make a €3bn adjustment in December's budget. But yesterday, Mr Ahern said: "That may include a property tax and charging for water - which are in every other European country." Dragged He also warned that low paid workers could be dragged back into the tax net. "There's a relatively small percentage of people who are paying tax. But 50pc of people are not paying a bob of tax. That is not su

The Merrion Street mandarins have failed us – it’s time for a shake-out... THE mid-point of the year sees the publication of the half-year exchequer returns and CSO data on the economy. This will form the backdrop to the formation of December’s budget. Next week the Department of Finance will circulate its strategic memo to shape 2011 expenditure plans. The Government has been softening up the public for tax hikes. A flat household charge of €175 for water and an average residential property tax of €1,000 per household are being promulgated. All the while, the Bord Snip Nua report continues to gather dust. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has announced an external independent group is to review the performance of the Department of Finance over the past decade. Speculation has centred on its advice to ministers, forecasting ability and competence dealing with the banking crisis. The lack of specialist personnel has been acknowledged. Its annual budget forecasts of GDP and tax revenues hav

Department says it warned of property bubble... THE DEPARTMENT of Finance says it warned the Government from 2005 onwards about the dangers of a property bubble, internal official documents show. Briefing material prepared for the department’s secretary general Kevin Cardiff last month states that the department warned over several years that the “over-emphasis on construction left the economy vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks”. It also defends the department’s performance in failing to forecast the extent of the downturn, and points to similar failures by institutions such as the ESRI, Central Bank and the private sector to predict the magnitude of the slowdown. The material was prepared for the secretary general ahead of his appearance before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee just over a month ago. The contents of the documents have been released under the Freedom of Information Act in the same week Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan announced an external review of the depart

The great property scam is back to rip us off again... They're back! The creeps, the snake-oil salesmen and spoofers who condemned a generation to negative equity are cheerleading again. The advertisers are salivating too because the "property porn" industry sees a chance to sell its fantasy again. The papers are once more displaying "dream homes" replete with doctored photographs and Mediterranean blue skies -- all at "knock down" prices. It's time to buy again, or so I'm reliably told by those who were so reliable last time that they gave us NAMA! I am not saying that property won't recover ever, of course it will; but not from here. Irish property is still extortionately expensive. It is expensive not just on a comparative basis but, more crucially, it is expensive on the basis of what is happening in the economy. Any government that is urging people to buy houses right now clearly has no intention of learning anything from the mistakes

Government has sold us out to neo-gombeen man... Over 100 years ago, JM Synge described the gombeen man as follows, "groggy patriot/publican/ge-neral shopman who is married to the priest's half-sister and is a second cousin once removed of the dispensary doctor ... the type that is running the United Irish League anti-grazier campaign, while at the same time they are swindling the people themselves in a dozen ways and buying back their holdings and packing off whole families to America". When we see the closing of businesses and the emigration of our neighbours and relations while deeply entrenched "insiders" disguise national robbery in the emotional language of patriotism, it is not difficult to conclude that the gombeen man never went away. Even in terms of the detail of Synge's gombeen man buying up the peasants' holdings, it is obvious that, for NAMA to work, the State will have to trade land cheaply at some stage in the future. And guess what? To g

Our economy has 'fallen off a cliff'... Ireland's economy has "fallen off a cliff" and is in the grip of the worst recession in its history as new figures reveal it has shrunk by almost 25 per cent from its peak. A loss of nearly one-quarter of the country's domestic trade in such a short period of time is seen as a catastrophe. The domestic economy, the day-to-day business of trading, has been decimated and business leaders have called on Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to follow the lead of the British, who put small businesses at the heart of their economic recovery plan. According to the new figures, since the peak of Ireland's economic wealth creation in the first quarter of 2007, Ireland's economy has reduced by a frightening 24.27 per cent, far higher than previously thought. While the main political agenda was last week dominated by Taoiseach Brian Cowen's reshuffle, focus will next week return to the state of the country's finances, wit

Ireland needs a new publicly owned bank modelled on a lender that helped rebuild Germany after the Second World War, it was claimed today. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said a state bank was necessary to inject much-needed cash into struggling smaller firms and business start-ups. A Strategic Investment Bank - based on Germany's KfW bank, which was set up under the post-war Marshall Plan to rebuild a devastated Europe - would also raise money for public projects, he claimed. "Businesses need money to start up and keep going," he said. "At the moment and certainly for the foreseeable future there does not appear to be any prospect that the existing banking system is going to provide that finance." Mr Gilmore said the proposed bank would be set up with €2bn taken from the national pension fund, with another €18bn raised from international money markets. Under the Labour plan, it would have a small number of branches and, while state-owned, would be run independently

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

'Returning to the spirit of Tiger Ireland is pointless. Only a completely new political movement can tackle the challenges'... DECLAN KIBERD : The UDC professor of English outlines what he believes needs to be done to fix Ireland NOBODY KNOWS what will happen next – not even our leaders. We walk as a community in darkness down a strangely unfamiliar road, into a new landscape for which there are no maps. Except, possibly, newspapers. Their sales may be in decline, but you can bet your life that more people are reading a newspaper, and in greater detail, every day. If you call into an office still lucky enough to be in business, you are likely to find people reading the morning paper. Four or five years ago, these readers would have been rushed off their feet with work to do and would have managed to glance at headlines only at the end of a fantastic day. The unwelcome increase in “free time” is but one reason for this heightened interest in current affairs. Another is the fact

"Citizens at the frontline are way down the list: the priority remains sorting out the banks to the best satisfaction of the banks"... When times are tough, choices must be made, priorities laid out. Last week, a film screened at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival showed what happens when such priorities pay scant attention to lives lived at the frontline of recession. Meeting Room is a documentary charting the rise and fall of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD) movement. CPAD was formed in 1982 to tackle the problem of drugs in inner city Dublin, where dealing and injecting were as common as little boys kicking football on the street. CPAD began with a meeting in Hardwicke Street, attended by, among others, Jesuit priest Jim Smyth. Pretty soon a plan of action was devised. Dealers would be asked to attend meetings of residents where they would be told to desist or leave the area immediately. If the dealers didn't show, the assembled marched on the off

Nanny state's pension plan is bitter pill for most of us... NANNY Hanafin, assisted by the two Bossy Brians, was in full swing yesterday. Work for longer, get less tax relief and, by the way, if you are not in a pension we are going to sign you up for one whether you like it or not. Yes, the 'Nanny State' knows what is good for us and was not shy about telling us yesterday. Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin, have decided many of us have been naughty, not nice. So they have prescribed a full dose of pension punishment for all. Naughty workers who failed to take out a pension when the boom was in full flow will now be automatically signed up for one. This measure will not impact on those who are already in an occupational pension scheme and those in the public sector. All workers under the age of 62 will have to work for longer. Those under the age of 49 will end up having to wait until they are 68 be

It's time to shout 'stop' -- NAMA is grand larceny... The land has reverted to the price you'd get from a farmer for putting a donkey out to graze on it For the past year, this column has been warning of a "triple lock" in the Irish banking system, which would financially incarcerate the Irish people for a generation. The triple lock would solder the people to the banking system in a suffocating embrace forcing us to borrow from tomorrow to pay for yesterday and, in the process, destroy the opportunities of today. Now with the Government upping its stake in Bank of Ireland, this prediction -- regretfully -- is coming to pass. The worst thing is that it doesn't have to be like this. The latest news that some development land in Athlone valued in the boom at €31m is now worth only €600,000 has truly terrifying implications for all of us, because it means NAMA will bankrupt us, and the triple lock implies that we can't sever the fortunes of the people fro

David McWilliams: We're all fools if we think recovery plan is patriotic... It's been nearly 18 months since the Government announced its bank guarantee. Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised over a year ago and it is coming up to a year since the Government first mooted the NAMA plan. Yet nothing has actually been done since then. Not a single loan has been transferred to NAMA. There has been lots of talk, lots of bluster and point scoring, but still credit in the economy contracts, house prices continue their slow strangling decline and, most significantly, the rest of the world has moved on. Why the delay? One interpretation is that our government doesn't understand that speed is crucial. If we compare our stagnation with other countries that have been faced with national bankruptcy, we compare dreadfully. Look at what the Swedes achieved in their crisis of 1993 when their property market collapsed along with their banks. In the four months between November 1993 and February

Shocking new probe shows 302,000 homes are left empty... More than 300,000 houses are lying empty around the country -- three times the official estimate, says a team of academics. The scale of vacant housing -- equivalent to half of all homes in Dublin -- could be enough to meet demand for years to come. The figure was worked out by the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (Nirsa), based at NUI Maynooth, which advises the Government. It is up to three times the estimate from Housing Minister Michael Finneran, who last week told the Cabinet there were between 100,000 and 140,000 houses lying empty. The construction industry suggested it was 40,000. NIRSA director Prof Rob Kitchin said he decided to calculate accurately the extent of empty housing because official figures do not exist -- only estimates. Along with colleagues, he used the GeoDirectory (Ireland's national address database), the 2006 Census and Department of Environment figures based on ESB connection p

Strikes no answer to crisis... AT A time when social solidarity and a sense of personal responsibility are needed as never before, employees in the most protected sector of the economy have behaved selfishly. A one-day strike by a quarter of a million State workers – and the threat of more to come – has damaged our international reputation and made the task of economic recovery even more difficult. When all the rhetoric and special pleading by trade union leaders is stripped away, what is left is the unattractive face of mé féinism. Public sector workers can argue they are not responsible for the recession and that they have already been forced to pay a pension levy. But their anger at the banking sector; at the Government’s mishandling of the situation and the various regulatory failures that contributed to our current difficulties is shared by workers in the private sector and does not exempt them from the tough fiscal actions that are now required to correct the public finances. Jus

1,000 a month seek help to pay mortgage... MORE than 1,000 people a month are turning to the Government for help to pay their mortgages. But as many as half of them are being turned down some months. The dramatic rise in the numbers who cannot afford to meet their monthly mortgage repayments has underlined the scale of the crisis affecting a growing number of desperate homeowners. The mortgage interest relief supplement is designed to cover the interest portion of the home loan. Those seeking aid have to show they negotiated to reschedule the mortgage payments with their lender. They also have to be means tested. And both husband and wife must be out of work. The increase in applications comes at a time when mortgage interest rates are at record lows. Expected rises in the next year are likely to push substantially more people to the financial brink. Figures obtained by the Irish Independent reveal that the Government expects to have to spend €60m this year helping homeowners to pay th

For God's sake get a move on... THE message from the OECD is clear. Translated into the vernacular, it is: "For God's sake, get a move on, lads" The secretary general of the helpful international body warned that cuts in public spending should begin immediately. In other words, the idea that a restructuring, spread over three to five years, would solve the crisis in the public finances is misguided. Mr Angel Gurria was probably too diplomatic to say as much in public. Instead, he looked Brian Lenihan in the eye and told him: "The problem is that you may not have time, Mr Minister . . . The markets are zeroing in on countries." The "markets" are loaning this country €2bn a month so that the Government's pay cheques for public and civil servants will not bounce, and so that the 160,000 private sector workers who have been thrown out of work in the past year will at least have some euro to buy food for their families. Yesterday's lowering of I

Ireland’s choice: €4bn in cuts or IMF... THE Government has raised the spectre of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) coming in to run the country if people don’t accept the savage €4 billion of cuts to be imposed in the December budget. Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his Cabinet colleagues have launched a PR offensive to soften people up for the cutbacks, saying the black hole in the public finances was unsustainable . Mr Cowen said everybody would have to make a contribution to help solve the crisis "according to their means". Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Ireland would face "ruin" if action wasn’t taken to get the national debt under control . Green Party leader and Environment Minister John Gormley said there was no point misleading people about how difficult the budget would be. And Health Minister Mary Harney warned that if the Government didn’t take the necessary tough decisions, the IMF would do so instead. "We’re currently spending €500m a week more

Brian, please find the nearest exit... As Leinster House twitters about FF talks with the Greens, we've already hit rock-bottom... WE DO not mean to be hurtful but even as they agonised, held hands, rubbed worry beads and emoted, the Green debate was utterly irrelevant to the realities we face. You see, the truth of the matter is that the Republic is now in such 'a state of chassis' it almost does not matter who governs us. Central bankers, economists from stockbroking houses and the political class may dodge and weave but the ongoing pantomime of politics as it is practised in Leinster House cannot hide one fundamental truth. Ireland is at the edge of an economic ground zero-style scenario , Mr Cowen, and frankly, I do not know how you or, more importantly, the rest of us are going to get out of it. Lest you be in any way unclear as to what we mean we'll simplify it for you. The Exchequer is now as solvent as a Liam Carroll company whilst our citizens, thanks to your p