Lock, stock and home

They may be willing to give us a bailout but the Swedes are bailing out of Ireland's property market. Last week they put their Dublin embassy in Greenfield Park in Donnybrook on the market through Lisney with a price tag of €3m because the new ambassador will be based in Stockholm. They may find a quick sale, despite the current market, as Egypt has decided to seek a new building to serve as its embassy. The only problem for the Swedes is that their building is about 480sq m, less than the minimum of 500sq m that the Egyptians are looking for.

PII squared

Solicitors worried by Quinn Insurance's decision to pull out of the professional indemnity insurance (PII) market received a fillip last week when specialist broker Prime Professions linked up with UK General Insurance's Irish subsidiary to provide PII with the approval of the Law Society of Ireland. All solicitors are required to have professional insurance as a condition of practice and the number of options following Quinn's withdrawal were limited to say the least. Prime Professions says it will also offer clients enhanced risk management procedures to allow them secure more competitively priced cover.

Yet more mulch

It was incredible last week to see yet another government report that completely failed to put forward an agenda for recovery. Our ironically named National Recovery Plan offers anything but, and symbolises the lack of vision that has characterised the governments of the last 10 years. They have become so used to regurgitating jargon that little innovation is ever included in such reports. Instead, they are usually a rerun of earlier documents and aspirations, which have largely gone ignored since their publication. We need a clear focus on the 'how' of recovery, whereas during the good times the government's focus was on aspirations rather than realisation.

Back to dear old Blighty

Interesting to see well-connected property agent Fergus Keane (left) is moving on to pastures old in England. He is leaving CBRE to join rival DTZ, where he worked from 1998 to 2003, and will now be head of its West End Investment team. Keane has been involved in more than €1.5bn of deals in the UK in the last four years. He believes much of the future interest in prime British property will come from the Far East.

Taxing issues

The cost of tax incentives and tax breaks is always a hot topic before the budget and on Tuesday economist Dr Micheal Collins of TCD and chartered accountant Mary White will publish details of a study comparing their use in Ireland with other countries. The paper will outline a series of reforms to tax expenditures which Collins believes would result in considerable exchequer savings. We could obviously use them given the tax breaks cost us €11bn each year, according to previous research by the duo.