Reported by FinFacts 26th Jan 2009
No doubt, as certain vested interests would point out, as an “International” survey they really would have no idea what’s really happening on the ground in Ireland, now would they. 
Blue Horseshoe
They seem to be basing their calcualtion of 5.4 in the third quarter of 2008 on the Department’s figures showing that house prices have only fallen by 2pc since the start of 2007. I find this hard to believe.
We put links to original reports where available, in contrast with most wire service reports.
How helpful of you to post the direct link to the report from our news posting 
We are a free service dependent on interested folk visiting out site.
On the issue of prescriptive policies (urban planning) versus responsive policies (no restrictions on building); there must be some kind of a trade-off here. I’d imagine if there are no planning regulations, prices would be lower, but developers will just take the most profitable course of action and build developments with very little additional amenities.
The report’s intention is just to deal with affordability but it would be interesting to hear some of the reasoning behind urban planning in the first place (the author has a phd in city and regional planning after all).
I had a look on the demographia.com site to see what they saw as the main issues in their previous 4 reports, and all I could find were a load of links (some not working) about how planning is ruining the world (paraphrased). From what I can make out reports 3 and 4 also seem to stress urban planning being at fault, and report 2 plays down any macro effects (e.g low interest rates).
I’m far from an expert on planning but given developer’s shoddy practices here regarding materials, house/apt sizes, accessibility, amenities, etc, would it really be prudent to leave all that up to them? I think a serious review of planning is what is warranted around these parts (I dont think the tribunal resolved anything?) rather than abolishing planning altogether.
Median Household income of 64.6k used as the base for Dublin.
Not much detail provided in the report, I take it this is net?
EDIT: Also, did we ever find out just what constitutes the type of property that the DoE are using for their stat here, are we talking 3 bedrooms because apartments are included…
I’m in regular contact with Hugh Pavletich and I asked him earlier about the the median income data. He said he would pass on the query to his co-author who is based in France.