Our seven point plan for Enda . . .

Dear Enda, Now that you have your feet under the desk, can we have your attention for a moment? OK so your first 100 days is going to be taken up with the IMF and bond holders, but once you’ve sorted that there’s the small matter of a lifeless property industry that once accounted for 30 per cent of the country’s GDP. Those heady days are long gone and unlikely to return. No one wants them back in fact, but what they do want is a functioning market and a functioning bank system. Can you help? Here are some ideas to be going on with:

1) Ask Nama to get a move on with the sale of distressed property assets. Yes we understand that the agency has taken over the loans rather than the properties, but it is time to get the developers and others who do own them to start marketing them and to see what they might be worth by discovering what the market is willing to pay. This might well mean that they will have to sell the properties below the buy-in price, but at least it will get the market moving again. A sale at this stage is likely to attract overseas money, and we could do with some of it.

Google could be just the beginning. There must be other international companies out there willing to take a property punt in buying out their Irish base. Have a chat with Facebook, which is quickly enlarging its operation in Dublin and could well need a lot more (cheap) space.

2) Forget about ordering a full review of all commercial rents this year. It’ll be a costly exercise which will only delay recovery in sales and values. Instead, get the landlords to drop rents where tenants are in serious trouble. A one-size-fits-all solution won’t work in this case.

3) Start demolishing some of the out-of-the-way, no-hoper ghost estates and let grass grow there once again. We admit this will be easier in Cavan and Leitrim than in areas like Tallaght, which has over 1,000 empty units. Use some of the surplus for social housing where appropriate, or offer some abroad at knock-down prices to attract either the diaspora or bargain-conscious foreigners willing to make a go of Ireland.

4) Get that property register up and running, even if you have to scrap several of the property quangos including the costly, Navan-based NPRSA, which has been been twiddling its thumbs for years now with no official job to do.

5) Get the banks lending again, and not just to a very limited number of first-time buyers, but also those who can afford to trade up, or those who might be in a position to dip their toe back in the investment market.

6)Don’t weigh down the private landlord with any more taxes. In the absence of institutional residential property owners – which are common across Europe – they are they only accommodation providers that Ireland has for now.

7) Think about selling some of the state’s property assets to get the public finances in order. Farmleigh might do for a start. Do we really need a state guest-house when hundreds of hotels across the country are virtually empty? We hear that a few Middle Eastern countries are looking for embassies right now. They’d all like to be neighbours of the American ambassador.