Why Sinn Fein is worse than Fine Gael.

realitykeeper

Yesterday's Times said Sinn Fein was in favour of mortgage tax relief. Well now let me see. Ireland has added 200 billion euro to the national debt since 2008 and all of that money has gone into inflating house prices.

So people with property already got their cut. And those without property are on the hook for that 200 billion, used to inflate other people's properties.

A better idea would be to deflate property in this country by taxing it to the tune of 200 billion euro and using the revenue to return the national debt (and house prices) to where they were right after the crash of 2008/9.

Exempting first time buyers and new builds from the tax would give us the spin off benefit of a construction boom as property owners sell to tax exempt first time buyers and buy new properties to escape the property tax themselves.

If Sinn Fein is serious about giving people who just got 200 billion euro even more, at everyone else's expense. Then I say to hell with them. I am out of here.

FG borrowed most of that 200 billion but by giving even more to property buyers, Sinn Fein is giving it's stamp of approval to everything FG has done and Sinn Fein want to take up the FG baton.

What a perfect pair Mary Lou and Leo Varadkar make.

awec

They only want to give the relief to people affected by rises, which makes it even worse. The people affected by rises are pretty much the tracker holders, since the trend for anyone buying since the crash has been to fix and then fix again.

The tracker holders have spent a decade paying pretty much zero interest, in the mean time their property values have increased substantially again and they're likely enjoying better wages compared to a decade ago.

These are the people who need help the least.

I think SF have badly read the room on this one, not sure if it's just ignorance of the situation or if it's one of their worst examples of trying to be everything to everyone.

RichardAnd

I think that it makes little difference who gets into power because none of the major parties will do anything other than continue the same policies to chase the infinite growth genie. Oh SF may fiddle with the taxes, but they'll still allow enormous levels of immigration, support every bizarre social ideology that is in vogue and spend money like a teenager who's won the lotto, which is great for GDP growth. The only parties that seem different are banded as extremists, and they will not get anywhere near power, so it doesn't really matter what they say.

Maybe Varadkar and Mcdonald should take a hint from Musk and Zuckerberg and have an MMA cage fight. No knee-capping allowed...

spaceHopper

You are so far from reality it's not funny.

Home-owners on paper are worth more but unless they sell and don't buy another home or down size they will never see that money. The 200 billion was to prop up the bank. Yes some property investors made or will make money but they are also providing housing the state failed to provide.

You are correct about one thing houses are overvalued and we missed an opportunity to correct that when the banks were rescued. The CSO constantly referring house prices to the peak of a bubble doesn't help.

SF want to give mortgage interest relief to people because the rise in interest rates is badly affecting some people.

We need to get a handle on inflation - not sure how that will happen.

Lastly every time except once when the state interferes in the property market it's ended badly - the only time it hasn't was when the state build homes in the 40's & 50's.

For example, in the 60 they introduced the first time buyers grant for houses over 997sqf. Suddenly all new houses became that size and the price increased by the value of the grant.

In the 2000's they abolished the grant, instead if you paid less than 317500 euros for a house you didn't pay stamp duty, in the space of 6 to 9 months prices jumped from 260 to 280 in Crumlin to 317500, then went over that.

The best thing they can do is get some clear thinking economists to come up with some plans, let them trash out each plan and then come up with one better one. My step one would be to get the councils to build houses and apartments.

DubCount

You have to accept that the main philosophy of SF is populism. Whether mortgage interest relief makes things better or worse, or makes no difference at all is irrelevant. Its popular with a group of voters who pay mortgages and are getting stung with increasing rates. Increasing social welfare, cutting income taxes, improved public services - anything that ticks a box for a group of voters, thats great.

To be fair, all political parties are populist. Some target a specific segment of the market (PBP/Greens), and some have to be bounded by the restrictions of actually being in government (FF/FG).

As an opposition party, SF will promise anything to everyone. What they will do, what realistically they can do or what they want to do - that may be somewhere very different to promises.

NIMAN

Well, we'll know in the next 7 years or so if SF can do what they maintain they can.

They'll have been the main part of government for 5yrs by that stage.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776889#Comment_120776889

SF want to give mortgage interest relief to people because the rise in interest rates is badly affecting some people.

The people affected by these rises, i.e. the people on trackers, have already had their housing costs subsidised for over a decade now by the people who actually had to pay normal amounts of interest on their mortgages.

These people are not the people who need help as they've already saved an absolute fortune on housing costs. They've had an unbelievably excellent deal for over a decade at this stage, and the taxpayer should not be on the hook to soften the blow of it coming to an end.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058302633/why-sinn-fein-is-worse-than-fine-gael

...jesus christ, we ve been over and over this.....

growing national debt is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does depend on whats done with that money/debt, in our case it was ultimately used to bail out banks that caused the crash in the first place, then to add insult, we were effectively forced to implement policies that caused astonishing damage to our society, i.e. austerity etc

we financialised our property markets long before the 08 crash, hence why we re now highly susceptible to its downfall, such as rising property prices, this hasnt changed!

increasing taxes simply removes money from the economy, so by increasing taxes by that much, would more than likely lead to catastrophic outcomes, but yes, we should be increasing taxes on the accumulation of wealth in the form of rising asset prices, in particular property, to try move our economy away from such outcomes, i.e. rising property prices etc

we re urgently in need to such polices including a land value tax, to try deal with our dysfunctional property and land sectors, to try radically change the control of such players in these markets....

sf and fg are complete opposite to the political spectrum, but neither truly want to grasp this nettle, fg cause its their base, and sf, well who fcuking knows why they dont seem to want to tackle the accumulation of wealth in the form of the price of assets, in particular property, maybe they want to try guarantee their election, but who bloody knows.....

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776971#Comment_120776971

Not so sure about that, many of them bought at peak and were trapped in negative equity for long time. Some were in houses but many bought apartments that have fire and structural issues so they can't sell. Sure a lot were on trackers and should have overpaid their mortgage to shorten it or take the sting out when rates rise. What about the people who had performing mortgages but were sold by Ulster Bank to the likes op Pepper Finance. It's not all cut and dry.

L1011

This is not the politics forum. Additionally, starting a new thread to evade a thread ban is not allowable.