Sir, – Lorcan Sirr is right about one thing: housing policy needs greater coherence and a much stronger focus on supply (“Help to Buy scheme is a money pit that benefits higher earners”, Opinion, August 18th).
Where we part company is the suggestion that seeking a tax system which supports investment while also asking the Government to reform taxes that actively inhibit housing delivery is somehow contradictory.
Certainty does not mean freezing a bad policy in place. It means having a clear, predictable framework in which decisions to invest hundreds of millions of euro can be made over many years. Tax rates can change. What matters is whether those changes are coherent, proportionate and understood in advance.
Ireland needs more homes of every tenure: homes to buy, homes to rent, social homes and cost-rental homes. That requires the State, private developers and long-term institutional capital. Pretending one can simply be removed from the equation will not produce a single additional home.
RM Block
Irish Institutional Property members are not asking the taxpayer to underwrite profits. We are asking the Government to examine whether parts of the current tax and regulatory system are preventing viable housing projects from proceeding and deterring the very capital needed to finance additional supply.
There is room for legitimate debate about individual measures. But dismissing any proposal from those actually financing and building homes avoids the more important question: what will get substantially more homes built? On that, we should all be capable of finding some common ground. – Yours, etc,
MANDY JOHNSTON,
Chief executive,
Irish Institutional Property,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Lorcan Sirr suggests that to make housing more affordable, the Government could invest wisely in building more social housing directly (noting that only 16 per cent of all social housing was built by councils last year), ignore the lobbyists preaching certainty but peddling change, scrap Help to Buy and leave stamp duty alone, and let the market fend for itself.
While these proposals have merit, it is very surprising that Lorcan Sirr does not suggest compulsory purchase of land for housing to reduce costs. The Kenny report of 50 years ago recommended CPOs for housing land with a suggested a premium of 25 per cent on agricultural prices. A similar system is operated in the UK. Successive governments have refused to act on this report.
The constitutional protection of private property is sometimes cited as a reason but that protection is explicitly limited by social needs. In any event, if constitutional change is required we have had referendums in the recent past on less important issues, such as the minimum age for candidates for the presidency.
It is quite extraordinary that successive governments refuse to consider implementing the Kenny report and even the left-wing parties do not include it as policy. – Yours, etc,
DONAL MCGRATH,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.
