Housing Madness

Until the late 90s Ireland had very low levels of immigration, but that changed quite dramatically, with very little or no planning.

With no strategy for scaling up housing, large scale building of new schools and hospitals, a lot of the social problems now are unsurprising.

I think it’s very hard to see how a stable housing market can be achieved given the many much larger countries that you can easily come here from. I’d love to think it was possible, but I don’t really think it is. The way things are now the market is bound to be boom/bust.

More social housing, doing up empty buildings, sure these things help, but the only real solution is to limit immigration to a number a small country can manage. Of course that seems to be impossible.

When I said recently that is what I meant within the last year. You are making it your business by discussing it publicly. Again you are giving no details so you have no idea about the values and what they think reasonable is.

Why do you tell us what you deem reasonable if you can't discuss their situation and then at least we will know what you are talking about. For all you know they expact a massive house in Galway city for 200k

Having to choose between different areas in Dublin is not at all comparable to choosing between Galway or Athenry.

It is not sustainable for the state for all the people who work in the city to have to live outside of it. It will in time totally erode the core of our cities. Not to mention the traffic issues this kind of short-sightedness will cause.

According to Google, Athenry to Galway is only 25km. You are saying that is not acceptable? Plenty of areas in Dublin are 25km from other parts of Dublin, e.g. Swords to Dun Laoighaire.

I'm not saying commuting is ideal, but what's the alternative if you can't afford a house in Galway city?

Realistically, what would your solution be then? You can't magic up a heap of cheap houses in the city overnight. Where do they come from and who pays for them?

Would you be in favour of the Council putting a CPO on half the city, flattening it and then putting in a heap of high rise skyscraper apartment blocks right in the city centre to accommodate workers?

You do understand you are comparing median rates to defend an argument that was about a couple on high wages saying they couldn't find an affordable reasonable property in Galway? What you have proved is they should be able to afford it and the person posting the claim was not realistic or more likely just dishonest as they never spoke in real terms of value.

Where are the extra people in the city living and working?

I wasn't defending the high earner couple's statement that they couldn't buy a house, I was trying to contradict it by showing that they could easily get a house within commuting distance of Galway. As it happens, the poster who told me that the median house price in Galway city was €322k then gave me the proof I needed that the couple's claims were boll1x.

It's absolutely the worst place to drive around/commute to in Ireland. I acknowledge that.

Sinn Fein will not fix housing, not because they don't want to because they can't. It's a very complex problem.

Fianna Fail and/or Fine Gael would have fixed it already if it was just a matter of will.

No you didn't. I explained more and asked did you understand the different view. I think the summation is accurate because you never explained why people who own should have to give up their property at their cost when the councils are actually the worst for derelict property.

We do know the councils own the most derelict property. So maybe wind your neck back and actually see this as a failure on councils not private owners

I looked at the site again.

There are around 177,000 individuals and other entities that are designated liable persons for two or more properties (this covers 559,000 properties). Properties owned by Local Authorities and approved housing bodies are excluded from the analysis below

Average house price in dublin now over 500,000 euros and rising ....

what could possibly go wrong ..

deja vu

There is plenty of land in Galway city to build - a better question is where would all the needed accommodation in Athenry be built??

Galway is a city, it has the services and amenities already. Suggesting that everyone just buy in Athenry is madness. And what about the current residents? They would have been very naive if they believed that when they first bought their houses that the city would never change. And again, all these question can be asked of Athenry or Tuam or any other commuter town. Pushing people on well paid jobs out to commuter towns just moves some problems away, and creates even more in the form of chronic traffic.