Housing Crisis - Your Take

I think one useful strategy would be to offer tax incentives to newly qualified or graduated entrants to the market so that we encourage a higher uptake of employment into the sector. A skills shortage needs to solved long term and that often means directing education or career goals into that market. Subsidizing training courses with lucrative outcomes. The more employment we push into that sector, the more competition. Of course, this only solves the man power issue, not the regulation or material costs or planning costs.

There is a total disconnect between the government shouting about how they are trying to solve the housing crises and the total lethargy of the councils and planning departments. You'll see it in the planning sections of any paper, all the major housing projects keep getting bounced back for further information, shoved off to ABP, etc - there is a complete failure to process planning in a timely and fair manner that kills a lot of housing projects and all these costs get passed onto the final buyer.

Councils generally are consistently failing in their responsibilities to service new large housing developments with adequate roads, public transport, schools, parks etc Same with new large office projects, they give the planning and then never think about where all those workers are going to live.

Planning boundary zones are totally in the control of the local councils, they could pick the outside boundary of any major commuter town, talk to the owner of the farmland, offer them 80k per acre for 20 acres, rezone that whole land to residential, do a part 8 planning for as many serviced sites as you can fit, council hires a civils contractor to do roads, lighting & utilities, councils places ad in local paper offering to sell sites to first time buyers who meet certain criteria of income and commuting distances at an affordable price of whatever it takes the council to break even, say €40k depending on site size, people are allocated sites from the road entrance, anyone not building on the site within 3 years has to hand it back to the council so you don't end up with a ghost estate. You are basically facilitating working families to build their own home at an affordable cost which is where government policy should be focused instead of giving new houses to people who could never have afforded one.

Basically I think the various government departments, councils, OPW, etc could be doing MUCH more and you can clearly see it in what the likes of Tuath, Respond etc are doing with government money

Or we could change Irish mammy's attitude that little Johnny must go to college and anything else is beneath them.

theres no question there is complete an utter waste of resources going on in the public domain, but we truly need to get over this idea that the private sector is far more superior and efficient, theres plenty of evidence to support this isnt true, both sectors experience these issues, in fact, many private sectors are worse than public sectors. the undermining our our public sector has been a fundamental part of modern political and economic ideologies, most developed counties are experiencing the same problem, we need to urgently change this, or these issues are simply just going to deteriorate further, we have empowered particular sectors, particularly the fire sectors during this period, and it has failed. its time for us to be adults and admit these failures!

Watch this refugee crisis and see all the solutions that will be put into action that weren't possible before. If the will is there to solve it, it can be done. The government has fueled the crisis by bringing in demand measures like HTB and shared equity. You have to address supply, its the most basic principle supply and demand. We have a constrained supply and the government just keep creating a bigger buying pool with free money, pushing up prices further.

For one there should be a massive crackdown on vacant property, not a measily charge. Something that will have the landlord running to the auctioneer.

News article in todays Independent.ie

‘The demand for apartments is only from one customer – that’s institutions. There’s no private demand out there, there’s no State demand out there’

...and potential collapse our economy....

Sinn Fein will look after us we just need to vote them in.

both entities are being undermined, in order to implement policies for eviction, alternative accommodations would also need to be implemented, neither are currently possible......

Whenever there is a huge demand for any service or product the 'market' always reacts and fills the gap. Lots of people want homes and there is no supply so that's a gap that you would think would naturally be filled.

We need to ask why this is not happening and fix that but the answer is probably very complex. It has nothing to do with money as there is plenty of this (to develop and build) so has to do with BS, planning, margins, regulations, skills, taxes, etc... i.e. it's obviously not an attractive prospect building in this country.

I think you have it wrong. There actually is no money for it. To get the money for it you have to put your hand in the middle income workers pocket with higher taxes. There just isnt the money in those pockets anymore. They are all trying to pay rent and buy houses, while the government are using the traxes they pay to compete against them for said property.

They'll get into power and do the only thing they are good at - blame FF & FG

It was hilarious after the last election when FF & FG left SF off for ages to do some deals with minor parties and independents to form a government only for SF to spend most of that time crying about FF & FG for not going into coalition with them even though SF had spent the whole election saying how FF & FG were a bunch of useless idiots 😄

There is a massive difference between private housing developers and councils developing social housing, ive worked with both and the councils are a disaster as they have no motivation to push projects along and the upper/middle management sign off on project phases and budgets takes months, its a total joke when they have bypassed planning with Part 8 to "fast track" housing.