Daft Property - Irish Property News

Emigration set to hit one-in-four city households... POLL: Quarter of young people want to leave. MORE than one in four Dublin households will experience emigration within the next 12 months. The scourge of forced emigration has yet to peak, a new poll of over 1,000 people has found. A major brain-drain is on the horizon as 23pc of young people aged 18-24 say that they intend to leave Ireland by early 2012. An analysis of the Millward Brown Lansdowne poll for the Herald shows that the exodus will include tradesmen, college graduates and other newly unemployed young people. Almost one in ten (9pc) people interviewed said they personally intend to emigrate within the year. And 20pc said another member of their household planned to move away to places like Australia, Canada or the US. More men than woman are ready to move overseas but those leaving are spread across all social classes. Around one in six are unemployed while one in eight are self-employed. The poll found ...

Surge in emigration as economic downturn takes toll... THE NUMBER of people moving to live in Australia, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Britain over the past year has increased sharply, reflecting a major surge in emigration due to the recession. New figures show Irish citizens have received 21 per cent more long-term resident visas for Australia, 49 per cent more New Zealand resident visas and 33 per cent more US immigrant visas. There has also been a 100 per cent increase in the number of Canadian work permits issued to Irish people and a significant increase in the number of similar visas issued for Australia. The number of people moving to Britain has risen by 2 per cent in 2010, which amounts to just under 1,000 Irish people moving to Britain every month to live. The figures from five of the most popular destinations for Irish emigrants are in line with recent data from Central Statistics Office, showing 65,300 people emigrated in the year to April 2010, the highest number leavin...

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...

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...

As the government continues to pump billions into our much discredited banking system, many Irish people unable to find work here are facing into a future outside of this country. John Downes, News Investigations Correspondent, spoke to some of the new Irish diaspora about their recent experiences of emigration... By any stretch of the imagination, they were a startling set of figures, prompting echoes of a past which we thought we had left behind. According to ESRI data released last week, we can expect net emigration of 60,000 in the year to this April – and a further 40,000 by April 2011. That's almost 1,000 of our best and brightest leaving every week. Yet the ESRI's predictions are simply the latest – if most stark – indications of a return to mass emigration among Ireland's unemployed, as the downturn has continued to take its toll. In September, for example, the Central Statistics Office revealed that Ireland witnessed a return to net emigration for the first time si...

Time to raze the unfinished relics of the building boom... Ireland is about to witness a US-style degeneration of half- built housing schemes into ghost estates, says Juno McEnroe. FORMER US President Thomas Jefferson once said that small landholders are the most precious part of a state. In Ireland this phrase rang true during the boom with the first-time buyers and start-up investors who were encouraged to throw their cash into property. At one stage the property and construction sector made up over 20% of Government income. A precious pot for the State indeed. But just as Jefferson’s ideology of giving tracts of land to ordinary US citizens ended up benefiting greedy speculators, Ireland’s property investment schemes during the boom saw towns ravaged by sprawl, over-development and a plethora of ‘phantom’ or ‘ghost estates’ that now look unlikely ever to be finished . So it now looks as though the landholders will be the most worthless, or even the costliest, part of our esteemed st...

'Ireland is a disaster . . . leave now and enjoy your life'... On these pages last week, Shane Fitzgerald, a young graduate of University College Dublin, wrote about the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise of a bright future in Ireland for him and his generation. Rather than draw the dole here, he left recession Ireland behind him – departing “these bankrupt shores” for London. His experience rang true for many online readers, some of whom reacted with strong antipathy towards our politicians. Here is an edited selection of how they see Ireland and its politicians. JAY: BORN and educated in Dublin, I emigrated to Canada in my 20s after working around the British Isles for a few years after graduation. My best advice, based on my very varied, interesting and relatively successful life filled with rich experiences and career choices, is to leave now and enjoy your life. Ireland is a disaster. It is sorely mismanaged and misruled and destroyed by its own absurdity. Ther...

St Patrick's Day revellers paint the town green... IT is the time of year again to don green garb, tune your fiddle and dance a merry jig. St Patrick's Day is upon us, and never mind if you aren't Irish. Don't think it's only Australians who go slightly mad in their celebrations. Practically the whole world claims Irish ancestry on March 17, all in the name of a good party. Besides, St Patrick himself wasn't Irish. What is St Patrick's Day? You could do worse than celebrate St Patrick's Day in Ireland, although traditionally the holy day was marked only by church and charity functions. In Dublin, there's now a week-long festival that includes street performances, a fun fair, treasure hunts, exhibitions and fireworks. In recent years celebrations have also been promoted in towns such as Cork, Limerick and Killarney. And in Galway, a St Patrick's Day parade meanders through the narrow cobbled streets and the town is filled with pipe bands, perform...

It's less middle of the road, more end of the road as the reality of the recession sets in with mid-income families who'd become used to mochas, Maseratis and Manolo Blahniks, writes Justine McCarthy You've probably heard most of the blood-curdling stories by now. There's that one about the corporate wide boys dumping their flash unpaid-for cars in the airport car park before hopping on the emigrant Airbus. And the one about crèches haemorrhaging toddlers as their highflying parents stagger to the dole office clutching their P45s. Or the one about builders offering free Lamborghinis and villas in the sun in a last-chance-saloon effort to flog three-bed new-builds in commuter-land. Or the mother 'n' father of all the doomsday tales: the one about the once mega-rich tycoon spending his last million hiring bodyguards to protect him from his angry creditors. You've probably heard them, and thought: Sure, and pigs fly. Perhaps it comes from a defiant optimism ro...

GOVERNMENTS have been drinking at the Last Chance Saloon when it comes to rescuing the world financial system, but it seems there is still a great reluctance to pay for the rounds. Last night's announcement from the emergency meeting of EU leaders fell short of the all-out strategy now being advocated by most economists. This would see governments putting fresh money (capital) into the banks so that they can begin counting and admitting all the capital they have lost through making loans which have not been repaid and, worse, buying loans and derivatives of loans at prices far above their real value. How far above was horribly illustrated on Friday at an auction of bonds issued by failed investment bank Lehman Bros. They were sold at less than 10 cents on the dollar, which means those banks which bought the bonds have lost over 90pc of their money. There is a general consensus now that losses in the global banking system are over a trillion dollars ($1,000 billion). It is an unimag...

Classic song by the spitting image TV show to the tune of the Madness song - Our House. Based on the financial situation of the time, rather like that of today..... Lyrics: Dad believed what Maggie said Get a mortgage buy a home So dad took out a great big loan For a while there we were chuffed Now the market has collapsed And we're absolutely stuffed Our house, in the middle of a slump Our house, no one wants to buy this dump Dad is desperate to sell But now our homes worth even less Than a pension from Maxwell Our living room's a mess Full of magistrates and bailiffs Trying to repossess Our house, in the middle of the boom Our house, it was worth a small fortune Our house, left us in a dreadful state Our house, why the hell'd we decorate We really caught a cold Nowhere we can go to now All the council houses have been sold Our dads taken some stick He's still voting Tory though By God he must be thick Our house, didn't work out like we planned Our house, prices dr...

So why are we in this international economic crisis - it's no accident - it's been planned for some time. Meet the money masters... "The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private ... all » hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole...Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world's money..." THE MONEY MASTERS is a non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumu...

Uncertainty over jobs after record market fall... AS grave uncertainty hangs over the future of thousands of jobs at Irish branches of recession-slammed US firms, markets are not expected to rebound quickly from yesterday’s record-breaking fall. At home, the ISEQ index of Irish shares’ closing figure was its lowest for more than five years. Across Europe, the trend was similarly dismal for a second day, with the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index falling 2.6% to its worst close since May 2005. The stock market shock waves followed the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old fourth largest financial institution in the US. In response, central banks around the globe pumped funds into the money markets, including €70bn from the European Central Bank, $50bn (€70.5bn) from the US Federal Reserve and £20bn (€25.2bn) from the Bank of England. Lehman’s bankruptcy filing, the biggest in US history, followed Merrill Lynch & Co’s decision at the weekend to sell itself to Bank of A...

The 'Fannie and Freddie' factor faces our banks too... If the two biggest American mortgage banks can go bust and be bailed out by the US government, could the same happen here? When the US government intervened to save Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae on Monday, it put the world on notice. We are now in a new era where our banks are the single biggest weakness in the economy and the State (meaning the taxpayer) will be expected to save them. The developments in America have serious implications for Ireland. If anything, our property boom was more ridiculous than that of the US. So the obvious question now is whether one of our banks might go bust. It could happen , but is it probable? We don't know; but if it wasn't a possibility, why has the share price of Irish banks fallen 60pc in the past year? The reason share prices have collapsed is that investors are afraid their money will disappear. Like the rest of us, they don't believe the banks' management. They have lo...

Towns feel pain as jobs vanish... Ireland's towns, once noisy with the sounds of construction, are ominously quiet, as people get to grips with a new reality and the prospect of emigration, writes Ronan McGreevy . A WEEK AFTER Leitrim were knocked out of the Connacht championship by Galway, the county captain, Gary McCloskey, emigrated to London. McCloskey, who was Leitrim player of the year in 2007, had been out of work for five weeks, having been made redundant by Shine Construction, based in Athlone. Shine, which had been involved in several projects in the midlands including the development of Athlone town's new stadium, blamed the downturn in the building sector for its closure in May. The firm had debts of €3.5 million and assets of just €990,000. Twenty others lost their jobs. "I had no work for five weeks," says McCloskey, a Trinity College graduate in civil engineering. "It came to a crunch and that's it - hop on a plane to London. It was easy, given...