One of Ireland's best-known property tycoons has upped sticks and left for Switzerland with his wife and children. Another has been taken ill in the middle of a court battle to stop his bank creditors liquidating his business empire.
But the plight of the republic's super-rich - their helicopters grounded, foreign villas up for sale and art collections under the auctioneer's hammer - elicits little sympathy among a careworn Irish public. The legacy of the country's recent property crash, and the havoc it has wreaked on banks and the public finances, could hold back the former "Celtic tiger" economy and its people for a generation.
