Daft Property - Irish Property News

Recession: the bad luck of the Irish... It was once hailed as the best place to live in the world. Now it’s in the grip of a terrifying economic storm. Could Ireland be the first euro country to go bust? In Ireland, the biggest funerals take place in the smallest churches. St Mochta’s, on Dublin’s western fringes, is little bigger than a front room. So many mourners turned up for the funeral of Patrick Rocca that they spilt out onto the pavement. Anyone who is anyone in modern Ireland was there, huddled together under a sky the colour of a day-old bruise. Politicians, pop stars, billionaire developers, horsemen and the sporting elite. Even the paparazzi. Rocca would have liked that. The 42-year-old was the self-styled poster boy for the new, resurgent Ireland, with a glamorous wife, private planes and helicopters, and a property business worth, at its peak in 2007, €450m. But one morning in January, he snapped. The first sign that anything was wrong was when neighbours saw him walking ...

Ireland Cuts Spending As Budget Gap Widens... DUBLIN -- I reland's prime minister announced €2 billion ($2.57 billion) in public-spending cuts on Tuesday, saying the country desperately needs to shore up its battered public finances. Also Tuesday, the Polish government approved a contingency plan to trim public spending by 19.7 billion zlotys ($5.65 billion). The budget cuts come even as other countries are boosting spending to juice their economies. Speaking to the Irish parliament, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said the bulk of this year's cuts -- some €1.4 billion -- would come in the form of increased pension levies on public-sector employees. That is effectively a pay cut for those workers. Mr. Cowen also pressed forward with tax increases for higher-income workers and second-home owners. Though countries around the globe are unwrapping stimulus plans, Ireland is in different straits. Tumbling house prices are gutting property-tax receipts, and Ireland is facing a widening b...

Ireland plans drastic cuts to prevent debt crisis... Ireland is to demand pay cuts for civil servants and public employees to prevent the budget deficit soaring to 12pc of gross domestic product by next year – becoming the first country in the eurozone to resort to 1930s-style wage deflation to claw back competitiveness. "We will take whatever decisions are necessary," said premier Brian Cowen. The Taoiseach yesterday denied reports that he invoked the spectre of the International Monetary Fund to terrify the trade unions into submission. But the threat – uttered or not – has been picked up nevertheless by labour leaders. "The IMF's normal prescription in such situations involves mass dismissals and pay cuts, along with cuts in pensions," said Dan Murphy, head of the public service union, who accepts the need for draconian retrenchment. The budget deficit will soar to 9.6pc of GDP this year as property tax revenues collapse. It is so far above the EU's Maast...

'No Irish need apply' - Polish builders get their own back... 'NO Irish need apply' - the signs are already going up on building sites abroad in a throwback to the grim days of the the last century. But this time they are starting to appear in Poland as that country takes its revenge for the way in which some unscrupulous Irish contractors treated their countrymen during the years of the Celtic Tiger. Trade union official Michael Kilcoyne - also president of the Consumers Association of Ireland - said it had recently been brought to his attention that the 'No Irish' signs had appeared on a couple of Polish building sites where workers were being sought. Mr Kilcoyne said: "The reality is that our international reputation as employers has been sullied. Many foreign people who have worked here, especially during our boom years, have had bad experiences. "The evidence of this is in the number of cases taken before the Labour Relations Commission over the l...

Poles flee ailing Irish economy... When the European Union expanded eastward in 2004, Ireland opened its doors to workers entering from former communist states to help maintain record economic growth. Now, immigrants are heading for the exit. The number of people leaving Ireland next year will outstrip those moving to the country for the first time in 14 years, according to Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. The biggest exodus will be among the 170,000 workers who arrived the past four years from Poland and other east European states. ''It's a very hard situation,'' said Artur Kawczynski, 30, who lost his factory job in Galway on Ireland's west coast 10 days ago. ''I rang my friends in Poland to ask what job opportunities there are like.'' Immigrants like Kawczynski fed the manufacturing and building booms that helped double the size of Ireland's economy during the past 10 years and made it the most dynamic in western Europe. N...