Michael Grehan, Sherry Fitzgerald

Press Release, 21 Oct 2009:

"Whenever I give a positive view of the market the perception is that I have a vested interest, talking up the business to increase revenue."

(The phrase "No shit, Sherlock" comes to mind - CMcK)

Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute

Finfacts, 16 January 2008:

Robert calls the bottom!

IAVI president Robert Ganly commented: "Overall, I would say to people that the market is beginning to stabilise. The worst is over."

He said that the absence of further rises in interest rates and the reformed stamp duty regime to provide some support, alongside "strong latent demand from young couples who put off purchasing in 2007".

While prices would continue to fall in 2008, "this levelling off should begin to reverse itself in early 2009, and we would hope to see the property market growing again some time during that year".

Irish Times, 13 January 2010:

2 years later, Aine calls the bottom!

These annual results are in line with our expectations for 2009 and consistent with our belief that the average residential property values would decline 40-50 per cent from peak to trough,” commented IAVI president Aine Myler. “The survey results indicate that the market floor is close, if we have not reached it already.

Insolvency Journal, 10 August 2010:

Latter that year, more bottom spotting....

"With house prices down 42% from their peak in 2006, it looks like the property market may finally have bottomed out, according to the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI).

[...]

Property prices are continuing to fall but the increase in activity in the sector is crucial to a recovery in the property market, says IAVI's president Kersten Mehl.

"The consensus amongst our members is that the market has bottomed out," says Mehl."

Ned O'Keeffe, Fianna Fail TD

Dail Eireann debate, 23 September 2009:

It is with great pride that I support my Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, in introducing this wonderful and badly needed rescue of the economy, property developers and the banking system.


Irish Examiner, 22 Mar 2009:

"I don’t miss the ministry, I miss the money. [...] They’re good-money jobs. They have a very attractive salary, very attractive pensions."

Dail Eireann, 30 March 2010:

In reference to Matthew Elderfield, the Financial Regulator:

"We do not want foreigners in here. Michael Collins, Liam Lynch, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, would not have those foreigners running our business. It is about time we looked after our Irish people who are well educated.


Dail Eireann, 21 April 2010:

"I do not agree with my colleague Deputy O’Flynn, as this country is over-regulated. I come from a farming background and no people are more regulated than the Irish farming community on foot of European regulation. I do not want to see that situation imposed further in other sectors of society."


[...]

If I were a bank manager in any small town, I would not give out a bob because I would be under strict regulation. I would be so frightened of losing my job that the best I could do would be to keep the money and let the bank reinvest it. There is nothing worse than overregulation.

[...]

I want to be fair to everyone in the House, the various sides of which have said much, but Pat Neary was a decent and honest man.


[...]

I am a shareholder in many financial institutions. I will declare it in the House because I was questioned last week by journalists. I have shares in Lloyds TSB in the UK and Standard Chartered Bank. I would not be very wealthy, but I have a few quid. My portfolio also includes the Royal Bank of Scotland, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Irish Permanent.

[...]

Much work needs to be done without regulation. This is the House to do all of that. We are the bosses. It is what we are elected to do. People put their confidence in us and send us to the Dáil. It should not be down to regulation and people doing the work for us.

Brendan O'Connor, Sunday Independent Columnist and ex-Comedian

Sunday Independent, 29 July 2007:

The smart, ballsy guys are buying up property right now. [...] Tell you what, I think I know what I'd be doing if I had money, and if I wasn't already massively over-exposed to the property market by virtue of owning a reasonable home. I'd be buying property. [...] So why would I be buying property right now if I could? Well, for starters, property is good value these days. It's certainly cheaper than it was six months ago.

Sunday Independent, 14 June 2009:

AS A homeowner, in massive negative equity, who knows a lot of other homeowners who are in massive negative equity, I want to know why John Hurley, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, has a job. I want to know who the fuck John Hurley thinks he is. He and his Central Bank cronies have made a complete balls of this country. I want John Hurley fired.

Sunday Independent, 10 January 2010:

All those paper millions that made us all feel so rich are gone, and now we curse the day we ever got on the ladder, we curse the ancestry that gave us this obsession with the land, and we curse the politicians, the banks and the media that encouraged the madness.

(Ah, "the media", was it Brendan? - CMcK)