Although its focus is the UK, much of this report is also relevant for Ireland: see here.
The current issue of Intereconomics has a series of stories about the politics of adjustment in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Niamh Hardiman and Aidan Regan discuss the Irish case. It’s well worth reading all of the cases for those of us engaged in the current debate, to see similarities and differences in the approaches. It’ll help those of us (read: me) engaged in teaching this stuff as well.
Niamh will also be speaking on this theme at tomorrow’s Irish Economy conference.
FT article here.
Irish mortgage arrears, particularly in the buy-to-let sector, are very high by international standards, at 8.8% for principal private residence mortgages and 17.9% for buy-to-let mortgages as of the third quarter of 2012. It is not all bad news, Ireland also has an extremely low rate of repossessions; there were a total of 79 judicial repossessions in the third quarter of 2012, consistent with the general trend over recent years. The Irish repossession/arrears rate is perhaps the lowest in the developed world. Notwithstanding that good news, the mystery of why arrears are so unusually high needs to be tackled.
From the Guardian Blog (via Greg Mankiw): here.