Ballincollig is drastically overpopulated as it is
"Fine Gael lead Governments from 2011 up to today’s coalition with Fianna Fáil, allowed rents to increase year after year. When the opposition proposed measures for rent controls and rent freezes, Government ignored it until eventually, it put in place a 4% annual cap.
But why did it not freeze rents, or link it to inflation, meaning a 1% annual increase? It is because 4% is the rate of return investment funds seek. Our rents are set to ensure investor funds make the profits they want."
They’d hardly be that obvious?
serious fuckups from ABP there
Of course they would.
A large proportion of voters have a vested interest in keeping house prices rising.
The simple answer is a European one: build a lot more in serviced areas, control rent, allow REITs, disallow single buy to let, strip tax benefits from REITs
No desire from FFG to change anything. I heard a dolt on the news warning against the “dangers” of working from home. Obviously had skin in the commercial property game but these kind of bullshit merchants are more likely to have the ear of government. The emergence of wfh will hopefully continue meaning less people will need to locate close to urban areas. Rural areas benefit from increased population, urban areas benefit from less congestion. A win win that FFG will do all they can to scupper.
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What FF are actually considering is further tax breaks to drive investment towards building.
You couldn’t make it up.
Just fucking issue tenders for developments and build housing on state land now.
I know. They won’t shake off that way of thinking and the lobbies won’t allow it anyway.
As far as I can see Sinn Féin are the only party with the ideology and political will to improve things. Even if they’d make a hames of lots of things which they might, i’d have them in government tomorrow on that basis.
The Sindo does not like this
The hitman hearne is coming for the government.
I presume hell be discredited in some way soon.
Think someone posted that already. Great article and there’s no reason, bar vested interests, that his proposals couldn’t be introduced tomorrow.
That’s a follow on article to the original one posted I think.
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Apologies.
the petition linked to that report has the following demands:
- Scrap investor tax breaks - scrap REIT tax
- Impose investor tax of 50% on profits
- Restrict sale of new developments to individual home buyers & not for profits
- Build public & affordable homes on huge state lands
- Right to housing in our Constitution
- Remove land lords ability to evict tenants for sale & no fault evictions
I’m not convinced by them at all. To be honest, they are spurious slogans rather than specific workable items. Maybe a more in depth list of proposals or solutions, but just simply throwing out buzzwords and populist phrases is not taking a real look at what will help solve the process. Removing developers entirely also will not work in this country, and its a dangerous route to go down to be relying solely on government to provide all housing is not a good idea. It shouldnt be 100% developer either, which it isnt, but considering the role developers have done in providing housing stock, pushing them out of the market wont help matters at all.
I’m not disagreeing that something should be done, but rather then the usual shouty catch phrases, put forward meaningful practical solutions that will properly help the situation.
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That’s Rory Hearne of Socialist Workers Party or similar isn’t it i.e hard left politics. Not to say that he doesn’t have a relevant point of view or be given a platform but when he’s clearly coming from a political activist background it should say it on the report what that is and not just present him as some sort of neutral academic expert imho.
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He’s a lecturer in social policy and has published an article containing policy proposals. How is it helpful to brand him “hard left”? Why can’t people read and engage with the content for what it is?
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Looking at the Children’s Hospital debacle you couldn’t trust FFG to make best use of public spending for housing. Stopping all investment is not the solution although they should be going to town on profits earned by foreign investment funds. Are Irish developers afforded the same tax avoidance ability?
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in a rare admission on TFK, I dont know what way profits are on Irish developers opposed to foreign investment funds.
I also dont disagree on the public spending on housing. The way public works are for most building companies are a pain in the bollix. It has to be done through the e-tendering process where its an EU wide admissible tender and its a complete race to the bottom. For smaller type developments, its just not worthwhile for builders to even bother their hole going for them. Plus the time it takes to go from concept to completion is ridiculously long due to over complicating procedures and paperwork. Efficiency is far from the forefront in the local councils doing these. and more often than not, the council staff to run these are woefully understaffed as their primary focus is more on renovation and improvement projects rather than new developments.
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I haven’t made any comment on the content. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the background of those making comment should be disclosed when it’s clearly relevant. Readers can then decide whether they wish to it weight on that or not.
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I’m interested in this thought. Where does it begin and end?
You said that he should be labelled “hard left”. How is that helpful to debate or to engagement with the issues discussed in his article?
If you think that’s reasonable surely every mention of FG in relation housing should describe them as “proponents of extreme neoliberal policies in relation to housing for the last decade”?
I think your suggestion is extremely unhelpful. You know well the effect of that kind of labelling would have. Would labelling the writer “hard left” help or hinder debate of the issues in the article? Are the ideas presented even “hard” left? I wouldn’t say so, no. They’re broadly left wing but they’re not even radical proposals.
Hearne was involved in a landmark complaint against Ireland on housing under the European social charter where a decision on against Ireland was issued. Does that make the Council of Europe hard left? According to your logic it must be because its decision aligned with the views of someone who was associated with the socialist party. Come on.
I can’t really get my head around how you think it would be helpful at all.
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