Daft Property - Irish Property News

Revealed: huge inequity in rural/city property tax... Small apartments in capital will be charged more than rural 'mansions' THE gross inequity of Finance Minister Michael Noonan's property tax is today laid bare as it has emerged Dubliners on the lowest rung of the property ladder will pay higher property tax than the owners of large four-bedroom homes across rural Ireland. One-bed apartment owners in the golden triangle of south county Dublin will be forced to pay on average €315 in property tax, higher or equal than that paid by the owners of large detached houses in 19 other counties outside the capital, a Sunday Independent national property survey published today reveals. The figures have reignited angry calls this weekend from within Fine Gael to have the terms and scope of the property tax amended in the Finance Bill to address the "injustice inflicted on the people of Dublin". Dublin South TD Olivia Mitchell said: "What is happening is th

PLANNING AND THE RING OF KERRY: YOU CAN almost hear Jackie Healy-Rae saying it – “the plannin’ is terrible round here”... What some Kerry people mean by this, of course, is not that the landscape has been chewed up by haphazard housing, but that it can be damned difficult to get permission to build in certain areas. The stark statistics do not bear this out. Altogether, there are at least 34,000 one-off houses in the countryside, accounting for more than half of Kerry’s housing stock or seven per kilometre of public road. That’s an awful lot of houses strewn around the landscape of a county that was recently voted the “most scenic” in Ireland. Kerry’s senior planner Paul Stack has been outspoken about the “incredible damage” done by the proliferation of housing. After an absence of 14 years, he “couldn’t believe what I came back to, planning went out of control”. “It’s like the Celtic Tiger – we knew we were wrong and we kept going,” he told councillors in July. “Eighty per cen

Taxpayers are forking out more than €1 million per year on bills such as electricity, gas, security and insurance to keep the lights on at the unfinished €170 million Kilternan Hotel and Country Club in Co Dublin. Irish Nationwide, under former chief executive Michael Fingleton, lent publican Hugh O’Regan €170 million to develop the hotel, but he ran out of money before it was finished. The project went into receivership in 2009. The receiver’s reports show that, over a 12-month period, the unfinished and empty hotel cost €270,000 to insure, €80,000 in ESB bills, €85,000 in gas bills to heat and €155,000 on security. There was also €200,000 spent on consultants, a further €110,000 on legal fees and €71,000 in receiver fees. The company filings show that the firm behind the ill-fated development received more than €1 million from the state-owned Irish Nationwide during the period to meet these ongoing costs. Its sole revenue is €30,000 in rental income. The receiver to Dashaven