It has been estimated that 10,000 cars have been abandoned at Dublin Airport over the last two years as people emigrate, that is on average 10 cars a week.

Karl Deeter, manager of Irish Mortgage Broker’s Operations said that there has been a notable increase in emigrants abandoning their homes, cars and debts fleeing to another country.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, he said “There is no doubt that this is a remarkable problem now. Not only are we seeing that banks have an increasing amount of abandoned homes in stock, but loans are being left outstanding, and the fact that car hire companies are having to tow away cars on a regular basis shows the problem in a clearer light."

Deeter believes that 30 percent of those who bought homes in Ireland during the boom times  have since relocated and many were foreign nationals who moved to Ireland to begin with 

“When you have all of these patterns emerging, it makes common sense that they have to connect somewhere. A great number of those who bought new properties over the last few years were foreign nationals, and we are now being told that there is an extremely high number of those foreign nationals emigrating."

The Central Bank of Ireland reported that 30 homes were repossessed in the first three months of 2010.

Deeter said “This level of repossession speaks for itself, and this figure is currently rising. However there are no criminal consequences for those who decide to up and leave the country. There is no form of international debt police. Given this, I find it astounding that more foreign nationals and even Irish are not just standing up and deciding to walk away.”