"average Dublin house prices should fall to ‘the €300,000 mark" according to Many Lou McD.

They are not the same market that is true, but they are related markets in that someone, for example, who gets a council house is probably no longer too pushed to purchase a house in the private market.

Given that councils have more money to spend than individuals and can if needed outbid individuals, it follows that money greater amounts of money is being invested in housing with the council involved than otherwise. This will result in an expansion of the building sector and more units built. More units in the long run is greater supply and therefore lower rents and eventually prices.

Essentially, this is what is required. More units built. If we were to purely rely on private purchasers a lot less money would be being invested in the property market as things like deposits are hard to save up for. Therefore councils keep things going providing much needed accommodation and incentivizing builders.

I fully see why people might be annoyed if a council pays a builder to build an estate or purchases an already built one but that is missing the bigger picture.

The councils are not building their own accomodation though. Thats the whole problem!

Social housing should be, in the main, constructed by the councils, i agree.

But because the councils have deep pockets, they are taking the easy route and simply renting the new apartment complexes from the developer. Note that they are renting, not purchasing.

So not only are they using tax payers money to lock out private renters (anyone on an average salary or above and doesnt qualify for social housing) they are also using our money inefficiently, as in 20 yrs time, when the lease comes to an end and the council has paid 100s of millions in rent & maintenance to the developer, the council owns not a brick in the complex and has to return the whole development to the developer...

Oh, and here's the best part, they now have to re-house all their social housing tenants...(but where? There is nowhere to put them)

And all the while they have made prices higher in the private market, by locking out the private renters who earn average salaries and upwards. (The people paying all the income tax and losing the right to housing by virtue of having a decent job)

The bigger picture is that councils just want to reduce their social housing list and dont give a hoot about the people that pay their taxes.

When councils start building their own homes again, then we will start to see a positive impact on the housing market.

At present, private developers funded by investment funds are the only show in town amd are the only reason we are seeing any new construction at all.

Local councils are proving to be the enemy of private renters/buyers, but they are doing a great job for homeowners by keeping their prices propped up, as they keep cutting off the supply of private housing by diverting it to social housing. (temporarily, as buildings are not owned by the council)

Its a terrible, wasteful, inefficient strategy and is the epitome of the govt kicking the can down the road on housing.

Do you have the same graph starting in 2006/7? Also, comparison to other countries with similar gdp growth.

I've heard it repeated many times that councils should build more council houses and that is true. Where people get it wrong, and if you don't mind me saying so, I think you also make this mistake, is that when councils build houses they do so without impacting the supply in the private market. A moments reflection and we can see why this is not true.

Each house build by the council requires labour, land and building materials. They must purchase these from the private market pushing prices up of those three things. That is why it is often cheaper to purchase a number of units from a developer who may have economies of scale in their favour.

Here is a blogpost on long-run house prices in Ireland, credit to Seamus Coffey of UCC.

The councils have to supply social housing but I don't think it is their job to literally build the houses entirely with workers directly employed by the council. Even private builders hire contractors for a lot of the jobs and don't have all the workers directly on their own payroll.

I'm not against councils directly employing building labour. Where I disagree is that there's a huge amount of savings in the long run over contracting building companies or purchasing newly built housing. There might also be issues with strikes with publicly employed and permanent building staff which would also drive costs up. I think there's reasons councils don't go down this route.

All methods pretty much draw resources away from the private market and drive up costs there. This is unfortunate but if you want social housing, that is inevitable.

Personally I think a lot of reform needs to happen in the private market to bring costs down there and attract inward investment. Building or purchasing more council homes, though necessary, is only part of the answer.

Maybe we'll go back to the days when bin collectors were direct council employees and so forth but I think there's probably reasons why councils take bids from competing companies rather than directly employing workers for a lot of areas that councils are involved in.

I think Sinn Fein if they get in will probably do a lot more direct employing, but I think this will be for ideological reasons rather than money saving ones.

The whole reason they are getting council housing is that they are not in the private market. Your understanding is deeply flawed Im afraid.

The thing is councils should be building on the land they already own not buying up private developments, councils have all the architects, engineers and planners they need to get schemes through planning and out to tender for a private builder to build but they are too slow and lazy at getting it done so they are not hitting the figures for units built and the knee jerk from the higher ups to boost their numbers is to use their big chequebook to take houses from private buyers.

Lets not forget a lot of councils are incredibly slow at turning over their own existing stock of houses where a tenant has died etc, can take 12 months for them to get another tenant in there or to CPO derelict houses in their area - too much like hard work for them.

The main reason for both of these issue is they have no motivation to do things quickly - if a private developer buys a site they want it built on and sold ASAP as its costing them money so might have houses sold in 2-3 years, the council are happy to tip along and take 5 years to get houses built.

The wording here is mixed though, its actually the AHBs such as Tuath that are buying up the most units out of the hands of private buyers and councils and AHBs both get help from the LDA, so for instance the LDA buy up some houses in a private estate and then hand them over to the local council for people on their housing list.

It doesn't really matter whether they are entering into agreements at the planning stage or purchasing completed units though. In both cases, people who are against social housing can argue that resources are being diverted away from building housing for sale to, in their view, more worthy individual purchasers of property.

Both of those reasons, of course, add up to increased costs and delays for the tax payer. Which is why it makes sense for councils to purchase ready built units in most cases rather than employ brick layers, site managers and so on.

The problem is more one of optics. When people see councils buying up finished or near-finished properties they think "I could have bought that" when in fact it may simply be the most efficient way of providing public housing given that all ways of producing new public housing divert resources away from providing for the private buyer.