A leading Irish economist has said that Ireland’s property crash is nowhere near over. Economist and author David McWilliams  says the worst is yet to come.

A report carried out by daft.ie, Ireland’s largest property website revealed that asking prices for residential property around Ireland fell by 4.2% during the second quarter of 2010.

McWilliams , one of the few economists to predict the end of the Celtic Tiger insists that the figures from daft.ie show just how extreme the negative equity trap now is. According to the report the average time to sell a property is eight months, down from 10 months at the start of the year.

McWilliams points out that the average time to sell a house in Dublin is four months, whereas it is up to a year in Connacht and 10 months in Munster. He suggests that because of this property value in the rest of the country may still have a long way to fall.

He added, “For the housing market to clear, prices have to fall much further; the basic maths can't be fudged. But when this happens, the negative-equity trap will tighten on the recent home-buying generation, whose only crime is that they were born in the wrong decade.”

McWilliams concludes that the property collapse will result in a 'lost generation' who will be largely shut out of whatever economic future this country experiences.