It just goes on, and on. Yet another report confirming that the house price bubble promoters are well and truly running the show in this republic in 2017. Once again house price rise is not just the obviously deliberate lack of supply that is the result of the state refusing to get back into building houses.
A major part of the current bubble is this government -with its solid support from Fianna Fáil and others keeping it in power, in case anybody wants to forget that - undermining Central Bank rules by making it easier for people to borrow more money than is wise and thus, with more money chasing even fewer houses, prices are only going up and the property developers and the like are back on the pig's back. And there's also that minor matter of building standards also being lowered by this government "to encourage builders to start building again". How utterly myopic can government policy become in so many ways? They aren't even looking two years down the road. Utterly astounding. Cowboys and crooks, gombeens and gobshítes, have formed Irish government housing policy. The ineffable shortsightedness of it all.
At this stage, Irish government housing policy is far, far beyond negligence. It is a deliberate policy designed to push house prices up, get heavily indebted builders to pay back their loans and pass new ridiculous levels of debt on to new purchasers who have increasingly very, very little choice but to buy (as the rental market is, again by design at this stage, a bastion of financial and home insecurity for any family). Meanwhile, just as they did in 2006, huge swathes of Dublin voters feel better because their property has gone up much more than they paid for it. So the distorted, stitch-up which qualifies as the property market will continue in this glorious "free market" that rightwingers love to contend exists.
This state will continue to hold future generations of house purchasers to ransom by maintaining, encouraging and Jesus Christ you couldn't invent it but actually giving tax incentives to people who build lower standard homes at higher prices than ever. In 2017. These people in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil who have designed this malevolent government housing policy need to be outed for the threat to the stability of the Irish state that they, once again, are. No "mistakes" here, no "poor policy". Spare the euphemisms. Nothing but my complete contempt.
Average cost of three-bed semi in Dublin now above €400,000