Ireland

Residential property prices nationally fell by 13.6 per cent in the year to July but rose by 0.2 per cent in the month, new figures show, the Irish Times reported. This compares with an annual rate of decline of 14.4 per cent in June and a decline of 12. 5 per cent in the 12 months to July of last year. The slight rise in prices in the month of July compares with a drop of 1.1 per cent in June and a decline of 0.8 per cent in July 2011, according to the Residential Property Price Index published by the Central Statistics Office.

Just over one in five home loans was in some form of financial difficulty at the end of June, according to new figures on mortgage arrears from the Central Bank, the Irish Times reported. The figures include for the first time mortgages where borrowers have missed repayments for fewer than 90 days in addition to regularly reported figures on mortgage arrears of 90 days or more.

The Irish Banking Federation has rejected the findings of a Central Bank report that claims Ireland is second only to Greece in terms of refusing loans to small businesses, the Irish Times reported. The Central Bank report published this morning found that Irish banks reject more business loan applications than any other state in the euro zone except Greece, with small and medium businesses in Ireland twice as likely to have a loan application turned down as the average across the region.

A liquidator has been appointed to the former holding company behind the Quinn group of businesses previously owned by the five adult children of businessman Seán Quinn, the Irish Times reported. Quinn Group (ROI) Ltd was wound up last month by the share receiver, Kieran Wallace of KPMG, appointed to the company by the former Anglo Irish Bank, which is owed €2.88 billion by Mr Quinn and his family. A spokesman for Quinn Group described the liquidation as a move to “tidy things up”.

The long-awaited personal insolvency regime will not be widely used to escape from under mortgage debt, and will come with little cost to banks, rating agency Fitch said, The Independent reported. An outline of the new rules was published in June and is expected to become law later this year. Fitch said it does not expect the changes to have any immediate impact on its rating of Irish mortgage books. It is in contrast to the view of Justice Minister Alan Shatter, who has proposed the new rules.

Ireland's budget adjustment in the period 2008-2014 will be the second largest after Greece among the euro area’s bailed-out countries, the Irish Times reported. In a new paper – Fiscal Consolidation: Does It Deliver? – Central Bank of Ireland economist Laura Weymes finds Ireland’s budget-tightening packages will be almost twice as large as those of Cyprus, Portugal and Spain – the other countries in bailouts by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

New research from the Central Bank has shown that the number of mortgage top-up loans for equity release has fallen by 97 per cent since the peak of the property boom, the Irish Times reported. The research showed that between 2005 and 2006, €5.5 billion of mortgage top-up loans were drawn-down annually, accounting for a third of all loans issued and 15 per cent of new loan balances.

The charge for bad loans at National Irish Bank will remain high for the remainder of the year before falling, the head of the Danish bank’s Republic of Ireland operations said, as the bank reported a pretax loss of €401 million for the first half of the year, the Irish Times reported. Loan impairments fell 7 per cent to €391 million for the first half, but NIB made a similar loss to the deficit posted for the first six months of 2011 as costs increased by 54 per cent to cover the closure of the bank’s 27 branches and laying off a further 100 staff.

The Central Bank official who argued for the appointment of administrators to Quinn Insurance in 2010 will attend the High Court today to help explain why the cost of covering the firm’s losses to the State’s Insurance Compensation Fund could rise to €1.65 billion, the Irish Times reported. Domhnall Cullinan, the head of the general insurance division at the Central Bank, will attend the court hearing for the purpose of assisting Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns in questioning why the call on the fund has risen significantly.

The creation of a new Nama controlled company to fast-track the acquisition of social housing has been welcomed by the Irish Council for Social Housing, the Irish Times reported. Nama Asset Residential Property Services Ltd, was incorporated last month to acquire vacant properties from Nama debtors for use by local authorities and housing associations. Fewer than 60 social houses have been made available through Nama since the agency was established to acquire development and land loans three years ago.