How can they be too high if people are willing and able to pay them? That’s surely what determines price in a free market.

most Berlin apartments are made very, very badly. the good ones arent cheap.

Frank – obviously you’ve never lived in a lower end rented “apartment” in Ireland. Even some of the newer ones are in shocking condition due to neglect, abuse from tenants and the bad job many management companies are doing. I’ve heard stories of blocks where whole floors have persistent problems with water supply and heating due to the poor workmanship of the original building project.

So you are saying the Euro will crash and burn but we will have a property boom by 2020?

Weird predictions TBH. If the Euro collapses, all bets are off.

Dublin prices are always heavily inflated so I would say they are NOT the best bet. Personally, I’d look at the more southerly regions like Waterford or Cork – great access to all services / road network / airports / cheaper standard of living etc.

Given the substantial increase in burglary, as reported in The Irish Times, I’d recommend you DON’T keep cash at hand. Furthermore, the ECB are behind the euro and are going to ensure effective monetary policies support it’s further use. With US debt spiralling out of control, that’s not exactly a good venture either. If you are looking for some where to put your cash, choose one of the large European financial institutions that have a presence here (such as KBC).

The government can’t simply ‘close up the banks’. This doomsday scenario you are predicting has no underlying arguments to support your theory.

Hughie, there is a limit to how much governments can support bankrupt financial instutitions. If they are permitted to continue to operate, especially if significant new borrowing is required just to keep the front door open, then eventually a point will be reached when it will no longer be possible to borrow to sustain those banks. The only option at that point will be to decide what to keep going and what to drop. The big mistake B Lenihan and co made was keeping smaller institutions going at the expense of more sustainable ones. The only one I can see ever really coming out of this in one place is Bank of Ireland. The others I suspect will remain under some kind of state support for up to 20 years at best.

Laura, thanks for your commentary and I do support much of what you say.

However, by its very nature banking is a profitable exercise so I believe the move by Lenihan (and it remains to be seen if it was a good one) was to inject the banks with sufficient capital to get the working capital (cashflow) back on track. The concept of forcing a bank to close and liquidating its assets is not a task any political party would wish to undertake, and for good reason – think of the financial strains on Northern Rock and the onset effects this had on other banks where depositors became sceptical on financial futures and withdrew deposits (creating a ‘run on the bank’).

I’m not saying I agree with every move Lenihan made – supporting failing institutions completely contradicts the notion of moral hazard. Failure to take action would have been the final nail in the coffin. In terms of inward investment, Ireland would have come to a stop overnight if the government hadn’t taken action.