Residential property prices fell by almost 18 per cent in the year to February, new data from the Central Statistics Office showed today, the Irish Times reported. Over the month, prices were 2.2 per cent lower than in January. The decline of 17.8 per cent showed an increase in the pace of decline from the previous month, when the annual decline registered 17.4 per cent, and the monthly decline was 1.9 per cent. In Dublin, property prices were 20.3 per cent lower year-on-year, and 1.2 per cent down on the month.

British video games retailer Game has collapsed into administration, the latest household name to fall by the wayside in the consumer downturn, Reuters reported. The loss-making company, which employs 10,000 staff in 1,270 stores in nine European countries and Australia, said on Monday it had appointed PwC as administrator after failing to find a buyer. PwC immediately closed 277 of Game's 609 stores in Britain and Ireland, making 2,104 of 5,521 staff redundant.

The European Union took a big step on Monday toward building a financial firewall strong enough to prevent the spread of fiscal contagion to major economies like Spain after Germany dropped its opposition to bringing the Continent’s total bailout capacity to more than 690 billion euros, or $916 billion, the International Herald Tribune reported. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said on Monday at a news conference in Berlin that her government remained determined that a permanent European rescue fund should be capped at 500 billion euros.

When EU finance ministers meet in Copenhagen on Friday, banks - and their reluctance to lend - will be high on the agenda as Europe looks to its economies at a time of austerity. Blamed four years ago for triggering the global financial crunch and Europe's ensuing debt crisis, banks are now being criticised for being too cautious. The European Central Bank points to a steady rise in the cost of borrowing and says access to finance has become one of the most pressing concerns of small business.

Euro zone finance ministers are moving closer to agreeing a combined rescue fund of around 700 billion euros (582 billion pounds) in Copenhagen next week and anything higher would probably be too ambitious, euro zone diplomats said on Friday, Reuters reported. The EU's top economic official, Olli Rehn, is pushing for a big fund capable of bailing out indebted euro zone countries such as Italy and Spain, should they be cut off from the markets, despite resistance in Germany, the bloc's paymaster.

The Central Bank has unveiled plans to strengthen how it protects client assets after a new report into its handling of failed Dublin investment firm Custom House Capital criticised its inspections of the firm, finding that the regulator lacked sufficient powers, the Irish Times reported. The report, by two of the Central Bank’s risk advisers, found that the regulator would have preferred to change senior management at the firm but only had the power to either withdraw its authorisation or put the company into liquidation.

Across Europe, banks, households and governments are pulling in their horns at the same time. It is a depressing recipe for a classic "balance-sheet recession" as the public and large parts of the private sector try to repair the excesses of the boom and rebuild balance sheets, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. One part of the economy, however, is an important exception to the rule: companies, particularly large ones. Across Europe, corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash. The trouble is, they aren't spending much of it.

The European Central Bank is hoping that a trillion euros in cheap loans will buy the eurozone enough time to make a future round of bailouts unnecessary, The Washington Post reported on an Associated Press story. The Frankfurt-based bank’s surprisingly large salvos of discount cash in December and February offered a bonanza for banks and bruised government bonds alike. The loans, offered at 1 percent interest and repayable in three years, were immediately plowed by banks into shorter-term bonds of Spain, Italy and other debt-troubled eurozone members paying much higher returns.

As slogans go, “restructure the promissory-notes repayment schedule” doesn’t have quite the same tub-thumping ring as “burn the bondholders”. But as Ireland has moved from the anger to the bargaining stage of economic grief, it has realised that coming to a deal over €31 billion ($41 billion) in promissory notes which the government issued to two failing banks is more important than defaulting on their remaining unsecured bondholders, The Economist reported. In 2008 Ireland’s previous government said it would stand behind the debts of the country’s tottering banks.

The economic slowdown weighing on both China and Europe may test Beijing's tolerance for a more flexible currency, thus creating competing policy interests for both regions, Dow Jones reported. Thursday's grim Chinese and euro-zone manufacturing data underscored how synchronized the world's largest economies have become. The 17-nation currency zone is widely expected to see a recession this year, which has bolstered forecasts for a weaker euro. Yet China has, at least for now, become the bigger worry.