Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

You may find it curious that at the moment the Irish Times is doing extensive coverage of Irish developers, those brave and assiduous men, and they are all men, who are bringing this country the type of shopping centres and office blocks that we could only have dreamed of when we sat watching Dallas in [...]

There has been much comment recently on the indebtedness of the nation such as Conor’s post on €1.3 TRILLION REASONS WHY IRELAND HAS AN OVERDRAFT FOR AN ECONOMY. On of the questions is how much of that debt is housing and how do we compare. Luckily someone else has done the work for me. Morgan [...]

Heads up to Random Walk for this one. And, ahem, McWilliams for the overdraft line. Ireland’s gross external debt increased by 262% under Fianna Fáil and the PDs, from around €521 billion in 2002, to over €1.36 trillion as of 30 June 2007. The gross external debt, according to the CSO, consists of “the gross [...]

The CSO figures released today show that planning permissions for the second quarter of this year are up 25%.  This is interesting as this was the time around the election where there was talk of a drop off in housing due to talks about stamp duty. It will be interesting to keep an eye on [...]

Economist anoraks will delight in all the data in the IMF’s latest assessment of the Irish economy.  The summary is here and the detailed report is here.   The report was written in July and so doesn’t cover the blow-up in credit markets since then.  But there’s a prescient observation about the banking system.

Conor made some interesting points on the nature of incentives to build houses pointing out the amount of empty houses that are in the country sighting.
The national average for unoccupied housings is 12.1% - and it’s 15% when holiday homes are added into the picture. For example, there’s 45,000 empty housing units in Dublin (25,000 [...]

This post arose out of a discussion with Simon on Michael Taft’s C’mon Ye Know-Nothings, (18 September 2007). Fianna Fáil has produced an abundance of tax incentives to aid the construction industry. One of these schemes, the Rural Renewal Scheme 1999 (PDF FILE, 887KB), is set to run until 31 July 2008. According to the [...]

… the mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this frame of things
(Which, ‘mid all revolution in the hopes
And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged)
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of quality and fabric more divine. (Wordsworth. Prelude, 1805)
People are the greatest thing.
A point all [...]

The ESRI/Permanent TSB survey on house prices has made for some interesting summer reading as it tracked a steady downward trend in house prices. Is this a slowdown or is it going to snowball into a meltdown? Well it seems that there is a drop in prices evident (in the region of €5,000 for [...]

Speaking at the launch of the Merchants Quay Ireland 2006 report, Junior Minister for Drug Strategy Pat Carey suggested the government may look at implementing a needle exchange programme nationally. The programme seems prompted by the volume which the smaller Merchants Quay project deals with. Last year nearly 40,000 visits to the programme were logged [...]

Last month I wrote a post about the glut of housing in Ireland, and how, as a society, we have experienced a mortgage boom, rather than a simple housing boom. A couple of people have suggested that “holiday homes down the country” account for the large amount of empty Irish housing units. Others have said [...]

I see today that the Berkeley Court and Jury’s Ballsbridge have closed for renovations. When I mean renovations, I mean they are going to be completely knocked down and a large complex of apartments are going to be built there.
The original plans were pretty massive and were vetoed by the council. I was [...]

According to Bank of Ireland’s Wealth of the Nation Report (Hat tip Finfacts), we are the second richest in the world after the Japanese. With €196,000 per head of population we are doing well. It certainly is an interesting statistic that shows the growth of the nation is motoring on. However 72% of Irish wealth [...]

In the past ten years the construction of houses and other dwellings has far outstripped demand, yet prices have grown at unprecedented rates.
From 1996 to 2006 the number of occupied households in Ireland (dwellings with one or more residents), increased by 346,300 units. At the same time, 611,961 new dwellings were constructed. This leaves a [...]

The Green’s have got out of the blocks fast and got one of their major idea’s in the process of being implemented. The idea of a directly elected Dublin Mayor and more power to local councils. And this has been hailed in many quarters as a good thing. But I think it [...]

Things have gone a bit quiet here at IE in the last few days, which could be despite or because of the fact that political life has reverted to form so quickly.  Nonetheless, it’s been a strange week for the Government even set against the apparently high standards of tolerance shown by the electorate, so [...]