Hard times come knocking at Millionaires' Row

A padlock locks the gate of Walford, the most expensive house in the priciest street in Ireland. Graffiti adorn the conservatory windows, the lawn is overgrown and old mattresses are piled up in the front room.

In a well-publicised deal at the height of Ireland's economic boom, the red-brick mansion was sold for €56 million ($99 million) to a mysterious trust called Matsack Nominees, widely reported in the Irish media to be controlled by the wife of millionaire property developer Sean Dunne.

The neighbours include telecoms tycoon Denis O'Brien, the biggest shareholder in Independent News & Media, who bought Belmont, a house a few doors down, for €35 million.

Walford, which sits abandoned after a failed redevelopment application, is on Shrewsbury Rd, a pleasant, tree-lined avenue in the Dublin inner suburb of Ballsbridge.

In the extraordinary gold rush that gripped Ireland it ranked as the sixth most expensive street in the world.

Few landmarks sum up Ireland's boom and bust, culminating in last week's £85 billion international bailout, more succinctly than this street, where prices have crashed by at least two-thirds.

"It's right in the centre of things; it's a street that's always achieved top prices," says Peter Kenny, associate director at estate agency Colliers International.

"But from the height of the market, it's fallen a very great deal."

To the uninitiated, Shrewsbury Rd looks little different to the streets surrounding it.

But a roll-call of Ireland's most prominent business people live here.

The former Allied Irish Banks chairman, Dermot Gleeson, who was obliged to bob and weave at the troubled institution's annual meeting last year to avoid eggs hurled by angry shareholders, is one resident.

Another resident is Niall O'Farrell, founder of a chain of formalwear shops, Black Tie, who stars on a television show about how to succeed in business.

O'Farrell is trying to sell his house - initially for €14 million, but now down to €8 million.

Property magnate Derek Quinlan, who part-owns Claridges hotel, is also looking for a buyer for his Shrewsbury Rd residence, priced at €7.5 million.

Nobody is biting. A house hasn't changed hands on Shrewsbury Rd for two years.

"During the boom times, these houses appreciated disproportionately to the rest of the market - the growth at the upper end was just phenomenal," says Simon Ensor, director of estate agents Sherry FitzGerald.

He says Dublin got rich so suddenly that there was a dearth of luxury property for the city's booming class of spectacularly wealthy entrepreneurs.

To calculate the price of a property on Shrewsbury Rd these days, Ensor says, you have to "start by cutting 50 per cent off the peak price and then calculate how much more that particular property has depreciated".

Few voices urged caution during Ireland's 10-year "Celtic tiger" roar of prosperity.

The country's growth was visible in investment by the likes of Pfizer, Google, Intel and Microsoft, which took advantage of Ireland's ultra-low 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate to establish European hubs.

It ran out of control as land prices rocketed and banks made reckless loans on a staggering whirl of construction. At the boom's zenith in 2007, 93,000 new homes were thrown up in a single year in a country of 4.5 million people.

The property bubble burst two years ago and the Irish Government has absorbed €45 billion in bank losses, with a further provision of €10 billion under last week's bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.

But doubts about whether this will be enough have undermined Ireland's credit rating.

In a budget next week, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan will outline a €15 billion austerity package sufficient to satisfy the IMF.

Anger and disillusionment flared on Dublin's streets last week.

"What's the point of having a constitution if we're not economically sovereign?" asked Paul O'Sullivan, an urban planner from Cork, who was protesting outside Parliament building with a sign declaring: "Bailed out, slopping out, the jury's out."

Another demonstrator, maintenance worker Paul Shields, said: "The IMF is here for one thing - to take care of the German banks, the Swiss banks, the British banks who are owed money by our banks."

Many of the Irish millionaires on Shrewsbury Rd have seen their wealth tumble. But they aren't the real victims of Ireland's crisis.

The country's unemployment rate is 13.5 per cent. It fell by a tenth of a percentage point last month, but only because people are leaving the country to find work. Britain's rate is 7.7 per cent and Europe's average rate is 9.6 per cent.

The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, told the Observer he feared the impending programme of austerity would push Ireland into a "lost decade" akin to Japan's stagnation in the 1990s.

Back on Shrewsbury Rd, several homes are being rented by diplomatic missions. The Finnish and South African ambassadors live on the street, and the Belgian embassy is on the corner.

Just like everybody in Ireland, estate agents hope that the bailout will be a turning point for the country.

David Bewley, residential director at property firm Lisney, says: "Do people here have the confidence to spend £5 million on a house? All the evidence suggests the answer is no."

But he adds: "The fact that our finances are being organised from a little farther afield may help."

- Observer