THE Government this week basked in the glory of their €10.3billion giveaway Budget.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien announced record capital funding of €6billion for housing in the Budget, with close to 40,000 homes projected to be completed by the end of 2024.
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However, critics said the huge spend does little to tackle the housing crisis. And the opposition insisted an opportunity to fix the problem has been squandered.
They warned that vulture funds will continue to snap up homes at the expense of locals thanks to the Government’s “derisory” stamp duty hike.
This week, Finance Minister Jack Chambers announced an increase in bulk purchase stamp duty from ten to 15 per cent in the Budget.
But writing in the Irish Sun on Sunday, the Social Democrats’ housing spokesman, TD Cian O’Callaghan, said a visitor to Ireland listening to the Budget speeches would be thinking there is no housing crisis here.
BUDGET 2025 was a golden opportunity to invest a €25billion surplus into finally solving the housing crisis.
Instead, we have been presented with a series of one-off payments in a vain attempt to win popularity before an election.
The Housing Commission has outlined how we need 60,000 new homes a year, but we are currently only building half that. If there was ever a time for a decisive action it was Tuesday’s Budget.
A generation stuck living in their childhood bedrooms will not forgive the Government’s failure to grasp this moment.
Last week, the Social Democrats outlined what needs to be done to address the housing crisis in 2025. In our alternative Budget, we committed to building 12,000 social homes and 10,000 affordable homes in 2025.
The affordable purchase homes will be available for under €300,000 in Dublin and under €260,000 elsewhere.
Cost-rental homes would be rented for under €1,200 per month in Dublin and under €1,000 per month elsewhere.
This would give genuinely affordable options to hundreds of thousands of people who are either stuck living in their childhood bedroom or trapped paying exorbitant rents with no ability to save.
There are 163,433 vacant homes in Ireland, with 48,000 empty since 2016. That’s roughly 37 empty homes for every homeless child in Ireland. This is not acceptable.
We would increase the vacant homes tax to an effective rate of ten per cent to bring thousands of empty homes back into use.
We would establish a €100million fund for the compulsory purchase of vacant and derelict houses to bring these back into use. We would double the funding for homeless prevention.
BUYERS LOCKED OUT
We would also increase the stamp duty on the bulk purchase of houses to 100 per cent to effectively ban homes being bought up by investment funds.
Allowing these bulk purchases to go ahead drives up house prices, locks out first-time buyers and benefits nobody but the investment funds profiting off the housing crisis.
These actions are urgently needed if we are going to begin the process of ending the housing crisis.
Budget 2025 squandered this opportunity to put things right. The stamp duty on bulk purchasing homes was increased by a derisory five per cent, giving the green light to investment funds to hoover up more properties.
These small increases to the stamp duty simply do not work. Last year alone, the number of homes bought by investment funds increased by 58 per cent.
When Fine Gael took office, someone looking for a place to live faced average rents of €757 a month. This has now more than doubled to €1,612
TD Cian O’Callaghan
The Budget continues the practice of this Government allocating huge resources in subsidies for developers. This is especially the case when it comes to the tax subsidies that international investment funds and trusts enjoy.
The vacant homes tax increased by a paltry 0.2 per cent to 0.7 per cent — utterly ineffective in bringing empty homes back into use. These terrible decisions have real-life impacts for those struggling to find a secure home they can afford.
When Fine Gael took office, someone looking for a place to live faced average rents of €757 a month. This has now more than doubled to €1,612.
NO BOLD NEW PLANS
House prices have increased on average by €80,000 during this Government’s tenure, while homeownership is at its lowest level in more than 50 years.
The number of people in homeless emergency accommodation has nearly quadrupled from 3,808 to 14,486 since Fine Gael took office.
A visitor to Ireland listening to Tuesday’s Budget speeches would have been under the impression that there was no housing crisis. There was no sense of urgency, no bold new plans, no acknowledgement whatsoever that rents, house prices and homelessness are all at record levels and continuing to skyrocket.
In fact, homelessness was not even mentioned.
In his budget speech, the Public Expenditure Minister, Paschal Donohoe, laid out his vision to make Ireland “the best country in the world in which to be a child”.
The 4,419 children growing up without a home and their families are facing a very different reality.
