ONE of Ireland's leading liquidators says its website can become "a Daft.ie for insolvency practitioners" as they try to harness the power of the internet to shift the increasing amount of property on their books.

The properties listed by insolvency specialists Kavanagh Fennell on the new buy and sell website include a nightclub at Dublin's South Great Georges Street, a 56-bed boutique hotel with 24 holiday apartments in Co Kerry, and a housing estate in Co Westmeath.

The sales listings are a new departure for the Insolvency­journal.ie website, which was established by Kavanagh Fennell to provide news and commentary earlier this year.

"We hope the sales section will develop into a Daft.ie for insolvency practitioners. In the past, we have mainly sold assets through our contacts and auction houses," said one of the firm's partners, Ken Fennell.

"We have decided to try the web as an outlet because it's the way things are generally going in other fields such as advertising."

Fennell said the website, which is run separately from Kavanagh Fennell, had been attracting around 5,000 hits a week to date.

"I think it shows the renewed interest in insolvency and the fact there are a lot of people out there looking for value in their investments."

Kavanagh Fennell is the only insolvency firm to advertise assets on the website but Fennell said he was confident that other practitioners would follow suit.

"It's another outlet for them. We hope to widen the range of assets listed on the site to include smaller, more traditional, insolvency lots as well as property," he said.

The number of businesses going insolvent has increased significantly in recent months – industry figures indicate that 589 insolvency cases were launched in the first five months of this year. This figure is almost twice as many as were filed in the whole of 2007.