Daft Property - Irish Property News

Full employment to bust in four years... IT took just four years for the country to go from full employment to a situation where one-in-seven people is out of work. As recently as 2007 unemployment stood at just 4.6pc -- less than one in 20 of the workforce. That has trebled to 14.6pc today. It may come as a shock to Celtic Tiger cubs, but you only have to go back to 1994 to find a similar proportion of people out of work. Back then, the unemployment rate had been bobbing around 14pc for over a decade -- down only slightly from its peak of 17pc in the mid-1980s. The difference between then and now is that a staggering 440,000 people are signing on for the dole today. Even at its worst in 1993 there were fewer than 300,000 people on the Live Register. Then came the boom and for over a decade Ireland became a Mecca for jobseekers, both international workers and its own returning emigrants who pushed the workforce to a once unthinkable 2.1 million people. Dole queues fell to...

Cowen issues warning about hairshirt budget: 'Major hole' in tax base must be filled... TAOISEACH Brian Cowen last night set the scene for a hairshirt Budget by delivering a stark warning about the state of the public finances. In an off-script address at a chamber of commerce event in Monaghan, he said he wanted to bring it down to "brass tacks", instead of talking about all the zeros and the billions. He said the Government was trying to fix the "major hole" in its tax base, following the disappearance of one third of revenues due to the economic crisis. "This year, we're spending €50bn and our revenue base is €32bn. Let's put that in context. One half of total revenue is being devoted to the health service presently," he said. Mr Cowen went on to say that social welfare, including pensions, child benefit and disability benefit, accounted for two-thirds of tax revenue. "So if you were to take health and social welfare alone, you woul...

Ireland faces a tough road to economic recovery... LIMERICK , Ireland – Hard times. You took out a second mortgage to fix up the house. Then in 2008, Ireland's housing bubble burst. A year later, Dell Inc. closed its Limerick laptop factory, putting you and 2,000 others out of work. You're 58 and unemployed, and your home is financially underwater. Gerry Hinchy is fighting with Dell and his bank for better terms. But he knows the manufacturing work and the property boom are gone. "It won't come back. They can turn the screw in China for 50 cents an hour," he said. "What's done is done. The question now is how to get out of it." To overcome a decade of debt-driven growth, Ireland is gutting its way through one of the world's toughest austerity efforts. Economists here say Americans eventually will face the same belt-tightening to reduce the debts of government, businesses and consumers. The Irish say they could not wait. As one of 16 countries usi...

THE number of Irish people being forced to emigrate to find work has hit a 20-year high, with the numbers edging towards the 30,000 level. The level of overall emigration, including non-Irish nationals, has remained constant at 65,300. But the number of Irish nationals leaving these shores including families was 27,700 in April, up 42pc on last year. Migration from other countries to Ireland has also slumped. The number of migrants dropped significantly to 30,800 in April from 57,300 last year, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The figures also show the highest level of net outward migration to 34,500 in April since 1989. Economists said yesterday that our youngest and brightest are being forced out of the country to find jobs because of slump in the economy. "The bulk of this is forced emigration," said Friends First economist Jim Power. "What we're doing is what we did very well in the 1980s and it is unambiguously negative. "T...

The taxpayer saved the banks, so now they turn the screw on mortgage rates... When the European Central Bank this week kept its key interest rate at one per cent, worried mortgage holders who are struggling to meet their repayments breathed a collective sigh of relief across euro land. Except in Ireland, that is. In Fair Eire, allegedly the land of a thousand welcomes, mortgage interest rates are actually going up. Economists say the main message from the ECB monthly press conference last Thursday was that the first hike in official rates is a relatively comfortable amount of time away -- probably no earlier than late 2011. That gives most people space to put bread on the table, squirrel away some extra cash and pay off their credit cards. Not so here, however, where public sector workers have seen their wages slashed and, as unemployment rises in the private sector, the public has watched helplessly as billions of euro of taxpayers' money has been used to prop up the banks. Billio...

Irish emigration soars as Celtic Tiger’s cubs hunt for jobs... The number of people leaving the Republic has swelled far beyond those of every other country in the European Union, says research. An estimated 40,000 people emigrated last year, according to the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, a rate almost twice as high as that of Lithuania, the next most affected country. It is expected the flow may worsen as the Republic faces years of severe financial difficulties. A research institute has warned that 200,000 people, in a country of 4.5 million, may be forced to emigrate by 2015 if job opportunities do not improve. The unprecedented prosperity of the so-called Celtic Tiger years seemed to have consigned emigration to the history books. Its reappearance is regarded with dismay. Some of those leaving are thought to be immigrants who came to Ireland in large numbers from mainland Europe over the last decade and who, unable to find jobs, are returning home. But a large proportion a...

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...

THE Government has been accused of presiding over a graduate "brain drain". Unemployment among graduates has almost trebled in the past two years, and student leaders say more and more college leavers are being forced to quit the country. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures reveal there were 68,600 unemployed graduates in March, compared with 25,400 at the same time in 2008. The jobs problem is greater for males, who account for 60pc of out-of-work graduates, up from 56pc two years ago. The Economic and Social Research Institute recently warned that 200,000 people may be forced to emigrate between now and 2015 if unemployment is not addressed. And the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) says many of these will be highly skilled graduates. USI president Gary Redmond said it was ironic the Jeanie Johnston famine ship was docked in Dublin's IFSC, the area that was once the heart of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy. USI members are planning a protest at the ship today to...

Caging Tiger-think key to Ireland's economic revival... OPINION : Stimulus and mass job creation is a must as we leave behind crazy, jargon-filled days of boom and pursue a more concrete reality THREE YEARS ago, it seemed Ireland was doing very nicely. And then suddenly it all changed. Our lifestyles were threatened; our wealth and dreams shattered. People had to try somehow to understand and come to grips with the frightening new reality of a rapidly deteriorating economy and a property market about to crash. Jules Henri Poincare wrote: “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity for reflection.” We have spent a lot of time since, necessarily so, reflecting on a continuous flow of appalling information about banks, developers, Nama, frozen credit, failing businesses, negative equity and a collapsing economy, accumulating in an astonishing and calamitous increase in unemployment. But unlike WC Fields’ comment ...

5,000 will leave each month over job crisis... 120,000 to emigrate by end of next year, ESRI predicts: MORE than 120,000 people -- or 5,000 a month -- will emigrate by the end of next year to escape unemployment at home, the State's economic think tank warns in its latest report. That means the equivalent population of Cork city will leave over the next 18 months. The figure is 20,000 more than the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) estimated in its last report, just three months ago. Jean Goggin, a co-author of the report, said: "It's quite significant -- we expect 70,000 to leave in 2010 and a further 50,000 in 2011." Unlike last year, most of these emigrants will be Irish, the figures suggest. Many foreign workers -- mostly in construction and retailing -- whose jobs disappeared have already left the country. "In the two years 2008 and 2009, the number of non-nationals employed in Ireland fell by 87,500," the report says. "The biggest adju...

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...

The victims of Ireland's economic collapse... Ireland was hailed during the boom years as a 'celtic tiger'. But now the government has had to introduce huge cuts to deal with its budget deficit. How is it affecting ordinary people? When Ann Moore returned to have breakfast with her family after a 12-hour night shift at a nursing home, she found riot police and bailiffs outside her home of 16 years. She and her husband, Christy, and their three children were being evicted. Despite climbing a ladder to the top of the house for six hours in a desperate attempt to thwart the bailiffs, the distressed care worker was eventually coaxed down and taken to hospital. Her home in the southern suburbs of Dublin was promptly boarded up. The Moores were badly in arrears, owing the council €10,000. For eight months, Ann had been paying back €50 on top of her €100 weekly rent. But in a country where 300,000 homes lie empty, the authorities decided to make the Moores homeless and punish them...

Being strangled by the monthly mortgage noose... OVER the past number of weeks and months, we have become used to speaking in billions. Seven billion to recapitalise AIB and Bank of Ireland; a €22bn cash injection into Anglo Irish Bank; €81bn worth of developer loans transferred to NAMA -- the list and amounts of money appear to be endless. But for many, the only real amount that matters is the one they need to pay each month to keep a roof over their head. Unfortunately, for tens of thousands of Irish families, this amount is far greater than their income and the mortgage rope around their neck simply gets tighter and tighter each month. According to the Financial Regulator, more than 28,000 homeowners have not been able to repay their mortgage for more than three months. Another 30,000 have been forced to renegotiate their mortgages. I suspect this figure of almost 60,000 is merely the tip of the iceberg and will only increase. Considering that more than 230,000 people have been made...

Cuts, tax and emigration the harshest medicine... IT'S often been said that the best cure for poverty and unemployment is a job. But the reality of the modern Irish economy is that the best cure is emigration. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) said yesterday that 100,000 people would leave Ireland this year and next, keeping a lid on already high unemployment and helping to relieve some of the budgetary pressures on the Government. The loss of 100,000 mainly young people is hardly something to celebrate, but the reality is that without this safety valve the Irish economy would be mired in levels of unemployment last witnessed in the 1980s. The ESRI calculated yesterday that if the amount of people in the labour market had not fallen over the last year via emigration, the rate of unemployment would be about 16pc not the current 13.4pc. Ireland is shipping out its young people to countries like Canada, the US, Australia and the UK, thereby easing the pressure on the e...

Recession damage to Ireland is permanent, says OECD... THE global economic crisis has left deep scars that will take years to heal, but the Government must start now to plan for economic growth, said a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Highlighting the scale and depth of the recession, the report estimates a permanent loss of 3pc in output (GDP) on average across the 30 countries of the OECD. Unemployment will persist at higher levels than before the crisis. The report said Ireland has experienced a severe set-back in living standards that is "likely to have permanent effects". But it noted that, despite this, Ireland's per-capita income is now close to the average of the upper half of the 30 OECD countries. Structure However, the structure of the Irish economy means real income is 15pc less than output -- the second largest such gap in the OECD. In its review of Ireland's economic policies, the Paris-based thinktank sa...

"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...

Green minister fears Greek-style crisis if banks don't get houses in order 'fast'... Ireland could be plunged into a Greek-style crisis unless the banks get their house in order "quickly''. That's the stark warning issued by the Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Eamon Ryan yesterday. "The final bill for everything, that is all the madness in mortgages, the developers and general finance could be as high as €34bn," he warned. "We have done a job in projecting the Government's ability to manage its own finances. Now we have to convince the outside world that the banks have the capacity to manage their own finances," he said. Mr Ryan also noted that within Government, the view was "the sooner we do it the better''. Referring to the improved image of Ireland in the international community, he said of the banking crisis: "We have a limited window of opportunity to resolve this now. If we miss this opp...

Irish among most pessimistic in EU about economy - survey... IRISH PEOPLE are among the most pessimistic in Europe about the economic and employment situation in their country and most people expect the situation to be worse in 12 months’ time, new EU research suggests. Although the research also suggests that the Irish are among the most satisfied Europeans with the area they live in, contentment with the public administration is very low and the cost of living is a major source of unhappiness. In a report drawn up amid signs that the world’s worst recession since the 1930s may be bottoming out, the European Commission warns that the social consequences of the downturn may take months or even years to manifest themselves fully. Irish attitudes to the situation were gauged in a survey of 1,007 people in May and June last year, following months of bad economic news. Some 90 per cent of Irish respondents described the situation as bad, one of seven countries in which nine out of 10 peopl...

OPINION : By 2015, Iceland will almost certainly be a lot better off than Ireland because it dealt decisively with its banks ... WHILE THINGS are hard to predict, the future, especially the situation of the Irish economy, is so stark that even an economist can make some predictions that stand a chance of being right. Two ghosts of Christmas will haunt Ireland in 2015: jobs and debt. For 20 years, the Irish economy experienced extraordinary growth. Unfortunately, this growth came from two separate booms that merged imperceptibly into each other. First we had real growth in the 1990s, driven by rising competitiveness and exports. However, after 2000 competitiveness collapsed, and growth came to be driven by a lending bubble without equal in the euro zone. As Michael Hennigan of Finfacts (www.finfacts.ie) has pointed out, of the half million jobs created in the last decade, only 4,000 were in exporting firms; and fewer people now work in IDA-supported companies than in 2000. The Irish eco...