From Monday October 27 to Friday October 31 the children are off school. This can mean one and one thing only: you need to keep them busy. Very busy.

JOINING Savills’ offer of the Dundrum House Hotel in Tipperary for sale at €2.75m, and the 110-bed Heritage Hotel in Portlaoise for €1.5m, is another Munster hotel — a beachside offer at €450,000, just waiting for the tide of opportunity to turn.

Killarney’s 188-bed Quality Hotel which had a price tag of €3 million has been bought by East Cork farming family the Crimmins.

One of Killarney’s hey-day 1960s hotel success stories has come back up for sale after several bouts of redevelopment.

NAMA is to introduce a deferred payments scheme in an effort to kick-start the property market as it yesterday released details of 847 properties that are in receivership or administration.

FOOD grown within 50 miles of Clonakilty is on the menu this week as the west Cork town focuses on sustainability.

FORMER senior management at the 300-bedroom Quality Hotel in Killarney, which closed two months ago after getting into financial difficulties, are to re-open the facility, it was announced yesterday.

A LARGE new home just off Clonakilty’s by-pass road on its western fringes carries a €475,000 price guide - and would be considered a snip by relocating civil servants set to flee the capital.

A TAX-driven holiday homes scheme is set to be marketed at the back of the former Killarney Ryan Hotel — also currently being re-developed following its sale last year.

A huge earthquake rocked southern New Zealand early today, authorities said. It rattled houses and hotels but caused no injuries or major damage in the mountainous and sparsely populated region.