Telegraph Date: 17 November 2010

Telegraph Date: 19 October 2009

Ireland is just halfway through its property slump and is likely to see house prices fall 45pc from peak to trough as austerity begins in earnest, according to a report by Fitch Ratings.

"The poor state of public finances has left the government no room to use fiscal measures to support the economy," said the group. It expects the jobless rate to climb from 12.5pc this year to 15pc by 2011.

"Tax rises, high unemployment, wage deflation, and property supply overhang" will weigh on the market for years to come, the reports says, meaning that property prices will fall back to the levels of 2000, reversing the entire boom of this decade.

Telegraph Date: 07 September 2009

All shopping and petrol station receipts in Britain could in future include the amount of VAT or fuel duty that goes directly to Brussels as an "EU tax", according to Jose Manuel Barroso.

The European Commission President said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph the idea of an EU tax will be discussed in the autumn as part of a major rethink about of how European funding is collected.

EUobserver Date: 25 August 2009

Brussels is finalising fresh proposals on European Union immigration policy, including a potentially controversial system of re-distributing refugees and asylum seekers among the 27 member states to lighten the workload of the bloc's border countries.

Both the re-location policy, which could see the transfer of people who land on the shores of Mediterranean countries to other EU states, and asylum policy reform, which could set quotas on the number of refugees for member states, are to be presented in September, Swedish immigration minister Tobias Billstroem has said, according to Agence France Presse.