Daft Property - Irish Property News

Artists and entrepreneurs are the key to our recovery... On St Patrick's Day two years ago, while nudging my way up a crammed Fifth Avenue, the idea of the Farmleigh Global Irish Forum came to me. I'd thought about it before and I had seen how other countries cultivated relationships with their global tribes -- particularly the Jewish tribe and Israel -- but it was only after seeing the unique outpouring of Irish America on March 17 that I knew we should do this. We should tap into the power of the tribe and see where it takes us. Like many initiatives, the real power of something like Farmleigh can never be dictated in advance. There is an element of chaos in putting people together who don't know each other and are bonded by something as fluid as having an "interest" in Ireland and allowing the conversations and ideas to flow. But Ireland has never been short of ideas, if anything we have loads of ideas and not enough people who can execute them. The hardest par

This time of crisis affords us great opportunity to redefine ourselves... The vision of our leaders is bankrupt. Now is the time to change our political culture IN TIMES of crisis, more than any other time, we need our politicians to provide leadership and clarity so we can make some sense of what we should be doing as citizens. In our current malaise we are still waiting for them and our public and corporate leaders to empower us with ideas so that we may reimagine our new Republic. It is a time of trauma and also of great opportunity and the need to correct this for the next generation should be a priority. What has been evident is that our artists, writers, thinkers, philosophers and (some) economists have been suggesting alternatives and a way of thinking afresh. I’m not suggesting that these new ideas will make us financially solvent again but in the absence of a dynamic political leadership, it is as good a place to start as any. It will, at the very least, replenish our idealism

'Returning to the spirit of Tiger Ireland is pointless. Only a completely new political movement can tackle the challenges'... DECLAN KIBERD : The UDC professor of English outlines what he believes needs to be done to fix Ireland NOBODY KNOWS what will happen next – not even our leaders. We walk as a community in darkness down a strangely unfamiliar road, into a new landscape for which there are no maps. Except, possibly, newspapers. Their sales may be in decline, but you can bet your life that more people are reading a newspaper, and in greater detail, every day. If you call into an office still lucky enough to be in business, you are likely to find people reading the morning paper. Four or five years ago, these readers would have been rushed off their feet with work to do and would have managed to glance at headlines only at the end of a fantastic day. The unwelcome increase in “free time” is but one reason for this heightened interest in current affairs. Another is the fact

NAMA board get pay increase of up to 70pc... National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) board members have received a hike in salary -- despite being less than three months in the job. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan yesterday confirmed he had approved a new fee structure for the nine-strong board in light of their increased workload. The board's chair, former Revenue Commissioner boss Frank Daly, will receive €170,000, a 70pc increase on his original pay packet of €100,000. And the team of ordinary members will receive an annual fee of €50,000, rather than the €38,000 first proposed. The board, which comprises of six ordinary members, two ex-officio members and one chairperson, were appointed by Mr Lenihan in December They have responsibility for shaping NAMA and will decide the future of developers, ranging from household names to small-time developers. Besides Mr Daly, the ordinary members of NAMA's board are former AIG official Eilish Finan, former Bank of Ireland board member

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

Ireland’s share of an EU sponsored bailout of Greece would be between €200 million and €400 million, according to an exercise carried out for a European think tank. Open Europe, a broadly Eurosceptic think tank based in London, has estimated what each EU country would be required to pay if Greece was unable to refinance its debts, of which €20 billion to €25 billion will mature in the coming two months. Under a series of possible systems, it estimated that Ireland’s share of the bill would be between €227 million and €406 million. The broad range was accounted for by uncertainty of the size of the bailout and the system used for calculating the contribution. Open Europe said that meeting the cost of the bailout could be either spread among all members of the European Union or confined to those who used the euro as a currency. Ireland’s largest exposure - of about €400 million - would arise if only eurozone countries were required to pay. Under the system, Germany could be required to p

"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