Senator Rónán Mullen (Ind) has said that Sinn Féin is acting to deliberately prolong the housing crisis for political gain. The comments were made during a recent Seanad discussion of the Land Development Agency Bill 2021. Senator Mullen said that there were “two primary reasons” for the failure of local authorities to address housing needs […]
Last night the Government succeeded in passing a last minute amendment to the Finance (Covid and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 that will allow institutional investors, otherwise “vulture funds”, to avoid paying stamp duty on housing units if they agree to lease them to local authorities. This represents a huge concession to the investors who have […]
A report on housing published this morning by Davy’s estimates that 200,000 new houses will have to be built over the next three years. That will require an average annual new build of 66,600 Less than 21,000 were built in 2020, with an even smaller number of completions projected for 2021. This will be to […]
ON THIS DAY: 17 JUNE 1871: The Westmeath Act and the unbroken resistance offered by secret Catholic societies against colonialism in Ireland. The Protection of Life and Property Act in Certain Parts of Ireland was passed by the House of Commons in June 1871. It was also known as the ‘Westmeath Act’ as it came […]
Watch the whole video here, so you can be sure that we’re not being unfair to Aodhán O’Riordáin, Labour TD, and, apparently, staunch opponent of owning your own home: During today's debate @AodhanORiordain raised the issue of changing the way we view housing and put a bigger emphasis on creating diverse communities creating a better […]
The Labour Party’s new policy is a new policy, technically speaking. But it is not a new idea. It is, in fact, almost 50 years old and was first proposed in the Kenny Report of 1973. The report is so old, in fact, that its author, Justice John Kenny, has been dead since 1987. The […]
The real debate about Ireland’s dysfunctional housing market is not about the problem but rather about how to fix it. The prevailing view seems to be that the underlying problem exists because there isn’t enough interference in the housing market. Accordingly, the only way to fix Ireland’s dysfunctional housing market is through even more government […]
One of the rather more desperate attempts by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to recoup lost ground to Sinn Féin has been to focus on the latter party’s apparent track record in voting against proposals to build housing developments. Sinn Féin has indeed pursued inconsistent policies, as we shall see, but the political reality is […]
The claim that all improvements in living conditions are illusionary distractions was pioneered first by Lenin in What is to be Done? and updated as part of new left ideology in the 1960s by Marcuse and the Frankfurt School of Marxism. It still forms the basis of current identity politics in which the traditional working […]
The Economic and Social Research Institute has this morning published a paper by one of its economists Kieran McQuinn on the likely short term future of the housing market in Ireland. The paper is largely technical regarding budgetary projections, but its main focus is on how state intervention in the housing market could be increased […]
Proposed housing debt would represent 1.5% of GDP.
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