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Members of Civil Defence patrolling Centaur Street in Carlow yesterday. Water ran to six feet in some parts of the town after the Barrow burst its banks over the weekend. Photograph: Frank Miller Read more...

Article in today's Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0815/1218747921594.html

Kelly is going to be really popular in banking, government and building circles in the morning with that article! :lol: Read more...

From the boards.ie accomodation & property forum:

Quote:

Did anyone go through the property bubble burst in the UK in the early 90's. If so you will know what happened and what happened since. I was there and seen it first hand - it was a buyers market even though some DOOM & GLOOM merchants were trying to talk it all down. We are at that stage and we will come out of it. The main problem is that buyers are put off by because DOOM and GLOOM merchants keep on harping about house prices are going to drop. Listen 3-4years ago it was all buy now buy now they are going up - make your money. House prices are now realistic - banks will lend. This is the message that needs to get out there. There are LOADS of buyers out there. Ask any estate agent and they will all say that their inquiries are all related to will it drop anymore? Everytime you pick up a newspaper its DOOM & GLOOM - lets look positively and get on with it.

Read more...

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/latest-news/property-market-in-crisis-as-homes-sell-at-discount-1457764.html

From the indo website:

" THE property market is in "crisis" with homes increasingly being sold at below-market asking prices, according to estate agents and auctioneers.

President of the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI) Edward Carey said that houses and apartments were being sold at a "considerable discount".

However, people selling were not reducing the advertised prices even though homes were being sold below that level. "There is no question that the property market is going through a crisis period at the moment and I think to call it anything else would be understating it," said Mr Carey. "

God forbid house are sold for less than they are worth!!! Read more...

Fairly thick if they believe this shite......

Quote:

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/surge-in-nonnationals-buying-first-home-here-1457456.html Surge in non-nationals buying first home here ALMOST one in 20 first-time buyer houses are being snapped up by Africans, according to figures to be published later this month. The figures, from the Irish Mortgage Corporation, show that while many Irish-born first-time buyers have been sitting on the property fence this year, the number of properties being bought by non-nationals has surged. Overall, non-nationals are snapping up one in four first-time buyer houses, compared to about one in 10 three years ago. Asian first-time buyers have the biggest taste for Irish property. About one in 14 first-time buyer houses are snapped up by Asians, with most of these coming from India, the Philippines, Pakistan and China. The number of EU nationals buying property here for the first time has jumped by about 50 per cent over the last two years. In 2006 and 2007, about 20 per cent of non-national first-time buyers hailed from the EU -- this has since surged to 29 per cent. Overall, EU nationals snapped up one in 14 first-time buyer houses so far this year. "While buyers come from 22 of the 27 EU member states, a stronger concentration comes from the recent accession states, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Romania," said Frank Conway, director of the Irish Mortgage Corporation. Three years ago, one in four of the Irish properties bought by non-national first-time buyers were from Britain, compared to only one in six today. - Louise McBride

Where do they get these clowns...?? Read more...

Folks,

the current graphs look like the no for sale etc. are topping out,

any thoughts?

looks like 73K is around the number? Read more...

The Regulatory soup charged with the protection of the financial consumer has failed us again.

The IPSO is supposedly in charge of transaction clearing under the benign gaze of Hurleys Central Banks and Financial this that and the others.

It has come to light that as early as late 2007/ early 2008 the IPSO should have noticed that there was certain activity on the skimming front .

2 or more gangs were allegedly installing devices to skim card information but these were NOT on ATM machines but on payment terminals inside retail and hospitality businesses. The IPSO mistakenly concluded it was staff in shops not 'engineers' .

These gangs were benignly watched by our useless regulators while they skimmed up to 100,000 different cards although credit cards are relatively useless to them, unlike Laser cards .

Finally the regulators had to act last week because the Birmingham Plod raided and nicked the back office belonging to one of the gangs.

Bank of Ireland promptly disabled 9000 cards that it KNEW to be compromised and set a daily limit of €100 on withdrawals outside the state . God help any Irish tourists stuck for cash . The other banks are following suit as I write with an expected 30000 cards disabled by tomorrow night and a further 70000 on watch.

Yet the IPSO has not informed retailers of how to check that their POS systems have not been compromised. Cards are still being skimmed and more disablements are expected even from BoI .

Today the Irish Times was fed a pile of shite by either BoI or IPSO or one of the Regulators ...or more likely the lot of the useless lying bastards :(

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0818/breaking84.htm

Quote:

The scam came to light last Friday when a retailer noticed a small device had been attached to a card payment terminal in one of its shops. The device had the capacity to record all information from the magnetic strip on the back of a payment card as well as the PIN number needed to make withdrawals or purchases.

The scam was well known BEFORE last friday . IPSO knew or SHOULD have known about this 6 months ago. Yet IPSO and their regulators failed to act .

Quote:

Informed sources have told The Irish Times that four further identical cases have come to light since Friday in the north and east of the country. The same gang, members of which are not believed to be Irish, is suspected in all cases.

The scam is nationwide and includes the west and south too.

Quote:

Head of card services at IPSO Una Dillon said: “IPSO has been working together with the Gardaí, banks, card issuers, terminal manufacturers and other relevant bodies in the banking industry to examine the details of this fraud so that necessary action can be taken to minimise its impact and to prevent it going forward.”

You are a liar Una, you lot won't even let Irish consumers cancel direct debits once they are in place EVEN if money is fraudulently taken from a consumer through direct debits. The IPSO Direct Debit clearing system actively assists in FRAUD against the consumer and YOU will not let the consumer cancel a DD and keep it cancelled.

You are not admitting the scale of the skimming problem at all.

Nor have you made consular arrangements so that Irish people stuck abroad because you panicked after the arrests in Birmingham are now stuck there with no money.

Shame on you , IPSO , the Banks and the regulators all. Just to give you an idea of the lies the Examiner front page had this story

http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=70122-qqqx=1.asp

Quote:

GARDAÍ are hunting a gang who skimmed more than 20,000 bank cards from sales terminals in Irish shops. The scam has forced banks to restrict withdrawals by account holders to just €100 per day when travelling outside the country. Una Dillon, head of card services at the Irish Payment Services Organisation, said the criminals went into the shops pretending to be doing maintenance work on behalf of the banks. “We have discovered only in the last 48 hours that a number of retailers have been affected by a point-of-sale compromise,” she said. “We are in the lucky position that it was discovered quickly and the gardaí are working on it.

So to conclude .

We the sheeple are expected to believe that

1. ONLY FOUR RETAILERS WERE COMPROMISED
2. ONLY 20000 CARDS WERE COMPROMISED IN A FEW SHORT DAYS , a mere 5000 per retailer.

Pull the other one. :(





[/quote] Read more...

Disappointment to see the government once again drop the ball and pussy around the issues - at this point a bit of straight talking wouldn't go amiss - there's only one solution - lower prices please.

Quote:

The government is considering moves to spur activity in the housing market, as part of a package of measures to stimulate the economy. . . A range of measures that could help first-time buyers back into the market are being examined, including an expansion and restructuring of the affordable housing scheme.

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=35241-qqqx=1.asp


And intense anger at that that f**king useless s**t Parlon

Quote:

Parlon calls for HFA reform to aid market - SBP The government should consider expanding the role of the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) to help break the logjam in the property market, according to Tom Parlon, the director general of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF). The HFA is involved in directing finance into areas of the housing market, including housing loans offered by local authorities. These loans used to have a significant take-up, but have become less popular in recent years due to the emergence of competing products from the banks. However, with banks tightening up on the availability of credit, Parlon believes that this could again become a key source of finance for first-time buyers, helping to boost demand for housing and clear the existing stock of houses and apartments, estimated to be around 40,000. The CIF has met environment minister John Gormley and is calling for the income eligibility limit for local authority housing loans to be doubled from €40,000 to €80,000, and for the maximum available mortgage to be increased from €185,000 to €400,000. The National Treasury Management Agency borrows money on behalf of the HFA and could raise the funding, the CIF believes, either directly from the market or as an investment on behalf of the National Pension Reserve Fund.

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=35229-qqqx=1.asp


When will this f**king idiot realise that were already under enough pressure thanks to an overbuden of debt??? Local authority housing loans to people on 80k??? Increase the loans to 400K??? What the fuck is next??? What complete a**ehole. Read more...

Temporarily returning from lurking to say this, 'cos a recent thread really concerns me.

It states that rating agencies now believe that the Irish government may bail out AIB, BOI and - wait for it - Anglo Irish - should they get into 'financial distress'.

Quote:

"Two of the three main credit rating agencies in the world believe there is a reasonable chance the Irish Government will bail out any of the main Irish banks if they get into financial distress. Fitch and Moodys have told bond holders providing debt to the main Irish banks that in the event of a collapse of the main Irish institutions – AIB, Bank of Ireland and Anglo-Irish - the Irish government was likely to step in to prevent a systematic risk to the Irish financial system. Fitch last week re-iterated an A+ credit rating for Anglo-Irish bank and told bond holders there was a "moderate'' chance the Government would assist the Dublin lender "should it ever be required''. Questions over whether the Irish government would use taxpayer's money to shore up an institution has a real practical effect on the banks involved. Some of the rating agencies incorporate the chances of government support into their ratings and as a result banks can access capital at cheaper rates than available to companies with weaker credit profiles. The agencies have now started to adopt different approaches to the issue. For example Standard & Poors said in a recent note to clients: "Standard & Poor's does not factor the probability of government support into the ratings on Irish banks''. However its rival, Moodys, recently circulated a report on Bank of Ireland which said that Ireland's second most valuable bank had a ``very high probability'' of attracting systemic support in the event of a stress situation. The same conclusion was reached in relation to AIB. >>>>> Irish government is ready to bail out banks, say main world credit agencies Emmet Oliver http://www.tribune.ie/business/news/article/2008/aug/17/irish-government-is-ready-to-bail-out-banks-say-ma/

When I saw this, a red light started flashing on my console.

When I saw Max Headroom's post in the Central Bank section of the forum regarding Eamon Quinn's comments on the radio:-

Quote:

Eamon Quinn of the Sunday Tribune was quoted on the programme as stating there appears to be a news blackout from the Anglo, the Irish Central Bank, The Regulator and the Quinn family. Eamon further mentions he contacted the bank of international settlements, even Geneva are finding difficulty understanding why The Regulator allowed a private individual build up such a large private stake in a plc bank. Eamon further commented he also spoke to S&P this week and S&P commented they have never come across such an event occuring in the world before?

http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?t=11711&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60


......another red light started flashing.

Anglo are a developers' bank, pure and simple. They have said so themselves.

I can see valid reasons for bailing out a proper retail bank like AIB or BOI, if such a dramatic course of action is required - not saying I necessarily agree with such a course of action - but I concede that there is a valid case to be made.

But there is no way bailout of a private developer bank can ever be countenanced.

I'd take to the streets to stop a bailout of developer private banks, if needs be. Read more...

According to the SBP the government will consider proposals to boost the house market in September. The proposals are presently being drafted. They will involue an expansion and restructuring of the affordable housing scheme to involve a greater range of dwellings and with the State taking an equity stake.

The proposals form part of an economic stimulus package. Read more...