Property site MyHome.ie said property prices fell 4 per cent over the three months, bringing the total fall since the peak to 40 per cent.

Prices for Dublin homes are down 46 per cent from peak levels.

The survey also showed that, based on average mix adjusted asking price, the average house price is now €249,000, compared with €260,000 three months ago.

In Dublin, the average price is the €286,000 compared with €302,000 three months earlier.

Author of the report Annette Hughes, director at DKM Economic Consultants, said the fall was disappointing but not entirely surprising.

“At the moment our best hope for 2011 is that some moderation in the rate of decline in asking prices will begin to emerge over the second half of the year,” she said.

“While the worst of the recession is over, serious challenges remain. Significantly lower demand and difficulties accessing mortgage credit are adversely impacting on the market. The absence of any firm evidence that property prices have bottomed out combined with concerns about imminent interest rate rises, spending cuts and new taxes and charges appear to be making consumers reluctant to make major purchases.” .

MyHome.ie is owned by the Irish Times.

A separate study from Daft.ie said the average house price was now below €200,000, with asking prices down 5.1 per cent on average during the quarter. The property website puts the national decline at 47 per cent from the peak of the market.

Its survey said the average asking price for a home was €196,000 in June.

Dublin saw a steeper decline than the average, falling by 5.7 per cent in the past three months, while Cork, Galway and Limerick cities saw prices fall between 5 per cent and 6 per cent over the same period, and Waterford city prices were down 9 per cent.

“The second quarter of 2011 has seen one of the sharpest adjustments in prices since the correction started four years ago,” said Daft.ie economist Ronan Lyons “With successful auctions of distressed properties at 60 per cent or more below peak levels, the sharp fall may actually reflect increased realism on the part of sellers.”

He said other factors were intense competition due to high stock levels, and difficulties in obtaining a mortgage.

The Daft.ie report is based on an analysis of the database of properties posted for advertisement on Daft.ie up to June 30th 2011.

Some 30 per cent of the vacancies at US companies surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce are taking more than three months to fill because of the difficulty in finding people in Ireland with the requisite skills and experience.

The chamber’s president, Gerard Kilcommins, yesterday highlighted the importance of addressing the skills gap emerging in areas such as science and technology, in order to protect inward investment.

“The rewards for investing in skills and education are great and the penalties for failure are severe,” he said, speaking at the chamber’s US independence day lunch.

Many of the 2,000 vacancies currently available at US companies are open to new graduates. The chamber’s annual survey found that member firms intend to increase their Irish graduate intake by 21 per cent in 2011 to almost 1,000 recruits.

Commenting on the skills shortage identified by the survey, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said the Government “recognised” the difficulties.

Speaking in Galway, where he was announcing 100 new jobs by US healthcare company Alere, he said: “We recognise that and I already had a meeting with the Minister for Education [Ruairí Quinn] last week, along with the information and communications technology (ICT) representative groups and the education interests,” he said.

Referring to the Springboard initiative announced in May by Mr Quinn, Mr Bruton said that 2,000 places were being offered in ICT programmes to fill this gap.

Mr Kilcommins warned that any move in Ireland’s 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate, even by a quarter or half-percentage point, would generate uncertainty, which would not be good. “If Ireland loses, Europe loses,” he said.

However, he said chamber members had been “comforted” by the clear, consistent message from the Government about maintaining the current corporation tax rate.