Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

🤦‍♂️

How is the tax payer subsidising homeowners, bar HTB or first home scheme?

The tax payer is subsidising renters, through HAP and other social housing benefits, but it is not paying people's mortgages for them.

More of the same for the foreseeable, essentially.

IPA has a bigger impact on tourism than housing and is a EU wide issue. What are your other multiple points in relation to housing? Or is it just a post that belongs in the political forum.

20,000-30,000 IPA arrivals a year (as we're now predicted to get every year) has a massive impact on housing. The idea that it doesn't is just people deliberately ignoring the cold hard maths. Every additional human who arrives into this country has to be housed.

Its the equivalent of 10,000+ housing units a year taken off the market, or almost a third of our entire yearly housing production being negated.

Its also now costing Irish tax payers over €1bn a year, that could be better spent on housing in other ways.

And its something that could be reduced by 90% almost overnight, if the decision was made to do so.

So its something that definitely needs more awareness of, and rational talking about, when the housing crisis is the number one issue in the country right now.

What are the reasons? The Great Replacement?

Homeowners (not necessarily mortgage payers) are being subsidised by the tax payer in a few ways and it is utterly criminal from FF and FG to squander the gains of the last 10 years on such a narrow-minded policy which will almost certainly come and bite the country on the behind when US growth slows and with it Irish growth; belts will need to be tightened and people will be wondering where the heck is the shiny new infrastructure, the €200 per month creche and minimised doctor/hospital waiting lists in the health system.

The FF and FG government has acted intentionally to raise house prices (which is not a secret, this has been a stated policy post-08 crash) and how can the government do this? A combination of policy and spending of tax income. Here are some of the ways the government subsidises homeowners by encouraging house prices up;

• Policies to keep supply of properties low by, eg not reforming the planning system, not introducing policies to ramp up supply (in fact we have known for 10 years that landlords have been leaving in their droves), not discouraging mass purchases of housing estates and apartment blocks.
• Policies to increase demand for rentals eg immigration has not been restricted at all even with no rentals available for 6+ years; in fact, employers and colleges have been continuously championed for bringing in new workers and students.
• Spending to keep rents and house prices high including HAP, rental tax credit, H2B, shared equity scheme, giving money to local authorities and charities with mandates to buy up / rent what little supply is available, mortgage interest tax credit.

By keeping rents high, this creates a yield on properties which of course increases their value and homeowners benefit from this.

In reality its just cold hard maths.

If there was any other policy change that the state could introduce overnight, that would reduce spending by €1bn a year, while also simultaneously increasing the output of housing units by 10,000 units a year, can you imagine how much discussion there would be of it? How every major political party would be falling over themselves to call for it?

But for some reason because doing exactly this involves reducing the number of asylum seekers accepted it gets very little media discussion. I would suspect because up until very recently anyone even suggesting we reduce the numbers accepted slightly was deemed a horrible racist, especially in more cosmopolitan media circles.

The overton window is moving on the issue finally now at least, but slowly. It takes open discussion, based on statistics instead of emotion, to fully legitimise the issue and enage with it. The more people who talk about it, and look at the figures, the better.

I’m talking about the fact that the response is to label it some ‘conspiracy theory’. So automatically people default to tin hat, anti 4g, flat earthers and the topic isn’t discussed as a result. And it just goes into the bat **** crazy box.

It needs to be discussed as you say with hard numbers and some middle ground found and not just extreme left or extreme right views.

Thats not accurate at all.

In the real world a government can bring in concrete policy measures that absolutely reduce the number of inbound asylum seekers, by making the country less attractive to them.

Denmark did exactly this back in 2016, and reduced the number of asylum seekers arriving from 21,000 a year to 1,500. A reduction of 90%+, while still remaining party to every international law and obligation that Ireland is.

Denmark's asylum policy measures have been proven to work in the real world to dramatically reduce the numbers of asylum seekers that will arrive, and could be copied over night by the Irish state. The fact that we haven't done so is very much a choice made by our government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Denmark#Features_of_the_present_Danish_asylum_system_(2023)

Everything on this list.

Even simple and sensible measures can be taken that don’t have to “stir the far right” which would utterly change the way public services and housing are delivered. I live in Germany and we are in Schengen, of course EU etc and it is mandatory to register with your local citizen’s office whenever you move within 14 days. This means there is always reliable and up to date information on how many people live in a county council area. Creche spaces are mandatory, local doctors, waste collection, etc can all service an area appropriately. Electricity, internet, gas, roads, footpaths, bike lanes, bus routes etc all service an area based on the demand which can be tracked. Ireland is an island, we have full control over our borders despite being in the EU; by just introducing something simple like a mandatory registration with the local authority it could greatly assist with government and local council planning to ensure that people have a chance to receive adequate services and housing which meets with the needs of the local population.

Unfortunately Ireland holds itself back with its own complacency and apathy so I don’t see much ever changing to dramatically enhance the liveability of the country; tinkering around the edges is the modus operandi of the country.

I think you have that wrong. Ireland Is standing by its international obligations and it does not seem to be about labour as many of these people can't work for a while. The granting of visas for skilled labour is about keeping companies going and is causing wages to not rise.

The thing is the government are only involved in some aspects of people migrating here. People coming here to just work unskilled jobs and live here are not that high because of the cost of living makes it not worth it