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

It would have the benefit of encouraging people to move into these essential areas, with shortages, like teachers, guards, nurses etc. We wouldn't have to increase all PS salaries, which would have a much higher cost. It would make it easier to hire people in higher cost areas. It would be people receiving subsidised housing who are arguably most deserving of it (this might be the main sticking point since normally we do inverse incentivisation here). The time limited part is really down to the fact that as salaries grow, they shouldn't expect to maintain subsidised housing. If they manage to save up some money during this time, great. The main cap on property price inflation is the amount people can borrow anyway

I didn't crop anything, I grabbed the first chart on google for the last decade of Irish housing prices.

"What goes up must come down" hasn't applied to investing in Irish property long term over the last 100 years. Its been a continual long term upward trend, as shown in Geuze's charts. An average price of £6,700 to €370,000 over 50 years.

This is the closest on a quick Google to give you a comparison with other countries, that also accounts for the post-2008 price dip.

Which shows even accounting for that 2008 dip if someone had owned the property for a few years beforehand they would still have made a profitable return on their investment. And even more so now after the increases over the last decade.

And, again, this is only accounting for capital appreciation of the house. It doesn't account for the hundreds of thousands of euro of rental income over decades of ownership of a rental property.

Anyone who tries to tell you being a landlord isn't profitable is lying. Its incredibly profitable.

However if councils enter into agreements up front with developers there's still the risk of cost overruns etc. which usually gets passed on to the council. We've seen plenty of examples of this. The developer learns how to game the system. It is true that the risk is reduced for the builder but additional risk is then borne by the council.

But I think the larger point is that resources are still diverted away from developers building for private purchasers and the same people complaining about councils buying direct from builders will complain about councils contracting builders to build social housing.

Your arithmetic is wrong I'm afraid. In the second scenario, if the councils contract the builder to build 3,000 social homes, then the builder will build fewer homes for private purchase as some of the builders resources will indeed diverted towards fulfilling the councils contract.

You can't get around it unfortunately.

Essentially increasing capacity is all the government need to work on. Identifying bottlenecks and removing them. But I think governments prefer gestures and photo opportunities with Potemkin style developments that benefit small numbers of people.

And then, of course, you have ordinary people (some of whom are on this thread) who simply don't want prices to fall.

Owning shares is also incredibly profitable, if you sell at the right time. Paper profit is just that until you sell.

Again the obvious question is, why isn't everyone a landlord if its incredibly profitable? Is there some mysterious barrier to entry, like, I dunno, the fact that there is a tremendous upfront cost?

Well it will have been shown as a winning strategy that has been rewarded by the electorate, so why not?

On the other hand, it's quite possible that the new SF government will get so bogged down with Gaza resolutions that there will be very little time for anything else 😃

Can someone explain the relevance of the Gaza conflict to Wexford CC? I am at a bit of a loss as to the connection.

You have 10s of thousands in tax, mortgage repayments, upkeep on the property also.

I suspect this idea that public sector is always less efficient is something of an ad populum fallacy.

I'd challenge it on a number of grounds.

1) Where's the research on this? And for something this political I'd be wary of competing research findings.

2) Is the private sector ever inefficient and wasteful? In my experience it can be extremely so.

3) What are the side effects? I've seen plenty of examples of where outsourcing itself creates an additional layer of bureaucracy both for the state and the private entity.

That's not to deny that public services aren't often terrible dysfunctional. It's hard to know how much this is an Irish problem though. Other countries appear to have public health systems which work quite well, yet ours, eek!

I'd advocate for a national house building entity over local councils, on the grounds that some local councils already seem to be terribly run, and that national governments could be judged directly on how successful it is.

In the interview linked earlier EO'B was very careful to clarify that MLMDs comment of 300k was only for new builds and therefore wouldn't have any affect on the value of existing stock.

So there's going to be two distinct markets, new builds which will only be worth 300k and existing houses worth their existing value.

I don't recall him explaining how this was going to work though..

100%

An efficient state run building company is fantasyland. Unionization, intransigence, inflexibility, strikes, pay claims, work to rules, 9-5 hours, constant overtime requirements.

300k, I'd be surprised if they were under 600.

As far as I'm aware the current government isn't building houses. I believe where these are 'delivered' by councils, it's on public land with private developers.

Did you see the article in yesterday's papers on the problems with privatization of nursing homes?

https://www.newstalk.com/news/nursing-homes-policy-vacuum-has-seen-raft-of-barrack-like-institutions-opened-for-profit-1630130

I notice too that the UK has renationalized some of it railways, and France some of it's energy.

Perhaps all sectors don't function well in the private ownership, just as all sectors don't function well in the public ownership (your communism reference)?

Does it have to be all one or the other?