Daft Property - Irish Property News

Hard Times You know times are bad when you can overhear elderly ladies on the bus using phrases like “the current budget deficit,” as I did recently, on a pleasant autumn morning in Dublin. You know times are really bad when one of them just about knows the figure: “Oh, God, it’s 30 percent or something.” In fact, the Irish government’s deficit for 2010 hit 32 percent of GDP, more than 10 times the legal maximum for countries in the euro zone. It’s hard to find a parallel to such public excess anywhere in the Western world. The effects of our crisis are everywhere you look. The bus that morning was almost empty. Barely two years ago it would have been packed with Polish and Lithuanian hard hats, dressed in work boots and high-visibility jackets and heading for their construction jobs. Now many of the migrants have gone back home. Construction has halted, and much other work besides. Fine restaurants now offer three-course lunches for just €15. Newspaper lifestyle supplements are fu...

'I moved from a three-bedroom house into a six-bedroom house. So I'm stuck' . HARD TIMES: Dublin families who moved to the commuter belt in search of a better life are among those now queuing for a living... IT’S AN eerily quiet midweek morning in Cavan town. Until recently, processions of lorries thundered through here at rush-hour and heedless streams of cars clogged up the narrow approach roads. Today, traffic glides through the town. The mid-term break from school means it’s quieter than normal, but local people say the long traffic jams have all but disappeared, even on normal weekdays. Greg (47), a father of five, would welcome the quieter roads and the faster journey to work, except he’s signing on the live register for the first time. He’s one of a swarm of Dublin migrants who sold modest properties in the capital and bought large, detached trophy homes in commuter-belt towns across the south of Cavan such as Virginia, Ballyjamesduff and Bailieborough. Some, though,...

Can we remake Ireland's future? The year ended with the certainty that the global crisis is not a short-term glitch, and that Ireland is suffering more than most. Will 2009 bring the shift in Irish political culture needed to bring us back from the brink? LATE LAST YEAR, when the rock band Tindersticks played in Dublin, they finished their set with The Not Knowing , a haunting ballad of love and denial. The words seemed especially apt and particularly poignant: "The not knowing is easy/ The suspecting, that's okay/ Just don't tell me for certain/ That our love has gone away." Replace "love" with "boom" and the sad song would be a three-hankie job. This time last year, the not knowing still came easy and even the strong suspicion that the good times were definitively over could be drowned in denial, excess or the mellow lullabies of "soft landings". Now we know for certain, and if there is to be comfort in 2009, we have to find it in t...