New regulations on mortgage lending have been announced by the Central Bank, providing some relief for first-time buyers.

One in five of all non-property owners in Dublin plans to buy a home in the next 12 months, according to a new poll.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has warned that setting mortgage restrictions too high would price many first time buyers out of the market and only benefit "wealthy people and the children of wealthy people".

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has warned that setting mortgage restrictions too high would price many first-time buyers out of the market and only benefit “wealthy people and the children of wealthy people”.

The new Central Bank rules on mortgage lending will be introduced immediately once they are agreed next week.

Further proof that Fine Gael and Labour have no intention of stopping the country sliding back into the cronyism is the revelation that in the midst the IMMA scandal, Mr Noonan didn’t even blush at reappointing Michael Soden and Des Geraghty as members of the Central Bank Commission quango. Did no one in the department think it would be worthwhile to advertise the positions to see who might apply?

The Central Bank is considering pay increases and bonuses for senior staff and all employees, as well as other ‘reward models’, as part of an internal review.

The governor of the Central Bank has said the assumption that being in the eurozone would save the country from macroeconomic trouble was a major flaw in policy thinking.

There is outrage among opposition TDs that the Central Bank has chosen to go ahead with the outsourcing of its IT systems, despite high profile failures of crucial banking systems in Ulster Bank last year.

THE squandering of our sovereignty is an outrageous betrayal of national trust that has taken just eight years to accomplish.

BANKS and lenders chasing troubled mortgage holders for repayments face a raft of restrictions on reining in loans which will be rolled out by the end of the year.

FINANCE minister Brian Lenihan has been urged by some senior advisersto allow the country’s €24 billion state pension fund to buy Irish Government bonds to support demand, an Irish official said yesterday.

AS the final cost of the Anglo Irish Bank bailout is set to be revealed later today AIB has been warned it may have to raise more than the original figure of €7.4 billion in fresh funding to strengthen its capital base.

EARLIER this week the Financial Regulator’s consumer panel reported that consumers are being “mercilessly fleeced” by banks trying to rebuild balance sheets crippled by mismanagement and greed.

CENTRAL Bank governor Patrick Honohan has expressed his confidence in AIB and Bank of Ireland meeting their end of year post-NAMA funding requirement targets and, thus, passing their current EU stress tests – the results of which are due at the end of next week.

STAFF levels at the Central Bank could swell by 350 in the next two years as the body – soon to be amalgamated, with the Financial Regulator, into the new Central Bank Commission – moves to build a more effective supervisory regime.

FINANCE MINISTER Brian Lenihan is likely to meet with opposition parties early next week to examine how to proceed with the planned formal investigation into the Irish banking crisis in the most cost-effective and efficient manner.

THE resistance to a formal inquiry into the collapse of our banking system needs to be confronted head on. Taxpayers are mortgaging their children’s future to preserve Irish financial institutions.

FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan was yesterday accused of doing a policy back-flip in order to allow AIB to impose an insider as head of the bank.

ONE of the country’s most senior economists has called for the setting up of not-for-profit state bank as part of a radical transformation of the failed Irish banking sector.