Ireland needs to fix housing before role of women in home

✱THE curse of the Boeing 737 Max 9 struck again when part of an Alaska Airlines jet fuselage blew out mid-air forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing in the US.

A total of 171 of the jets have been grounded until safety tests are complete. Luckily there was no one was sucked out.

The Max was grounded in March 2019 for a year-and-a-half after the second of two similar crashes saw everyone on board killed.

While I love flying I would have serious reservations about travelling on a 737 Max 9... even if I got free tickets.

IRELAND is a strange country when the Government is supposedly so concerned about the role of women in the home that a referendum is required while oblivious to women, and men, who will never own a home.

Then again, what chance do you people have of ever buying a house when huge overseas wealth funds are allowed to snap up entire housing estates?

This was the question asked of me this week by a disillusioned young garda who plans to emigrate because he feels there is no hope of ever owning his own home.

Described as vampire funds, because they suck the lifeblood out of the property market, these cash rich investment firms are willing to pay well over the odds and increased stamp duty – locking Irish people out of the market.

This week it emerged another wealth fund has bought up 85% of a Dublin 17 housing estate originally aimed at individual buyers.

The revelation came just days after it was announced there is now a record 13,500 people homeless, including 4,105 children.

The Business Post reported the 46 properties, bought for €21.5million, will be rented for €3,175 per month. According to figures obtained by Sinn Fein’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty property investors spent more than €200million on bulk buying 630 homes since the Government put in place new rules that were supposed to limit this practice.

The new 10% rate was put into effect by the Department of Finance in 2021 as a deterrent against bulk buying.

The vampires know they can charge among the highest rents in Europe so are willing to pay 10 times the normal stamp duty to get their hands on properties.

What chance do the public have when the system is loaded against them while the Government does nothing to stop wealth funds buying up the very limited number of properties available?

After the latest public outcry the Taoiseach indicated a willingness to further hike stamp duty on institutional investors bulk-buying Irish houses.

This is all too little, too late and typically Leo Varadkar is reacting to public pressure and a threat to his party rather than doing the right thing in the public interest.

The fact is the current situation didn’t come about by accident but by design as the Government has facilitated and encouraged the vultures and vampires with tax breaks and other incentives.

Indeed, there are still no restrictions on investment funds buying up thousands of apartments as soon as they are completed.

When asked about the record numbers of homeless last weekend the Taoiseach failed to answer and instead deflected to the record numbers of jobs created by the Government.

He was let off the hook by the RTE interviewer although to be fair he did get Mr Varadkar to agree having over 4,000 homeless children is “shameful”. The follow-up question when the original one was deflected should have been “do you expect workers to sleep on the factory or office floor?”.

What’s the point in providing jobs if the public can’t find or afford accommodation and are having to leave the country at a time of full employment?

There is now total lack of trust in both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to make the radical changes needed to make life better for the vast majority Irish citizens. Micheal Martin claimed last year Sinn Fein is “infecting a new generation” when in reality it’s his Government’s policies denying young people the chances and rights their parents took for granted.

The official figures from Eurostat speak for themselves and show that 68% of Irish adults aged between 25 and 29 were still living at home with their parents in 2022.

In other European countries we compare ourselves with, such as Denmark, that figure is 4.4% while in Finland it’s 5.7%. This is the dysfunctional model that has locked a generation out of owning a home and pushed them into paying penal rents to foreign investment funds if they hope to live an independent life.

Thirteen years of Fine Gael’s free market ideology has reduced the country to a place where gardai and others in what were considered steady jobs are forced to leave because they can’t afford a home.

As for Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin should not be worried about Sinn Fein infecting young people and instead be more concerned that Fianna Fail has been so contaminated by Fine Gael that both parties are now indistinguishable from each other.

Micheal should be concerned at Fine Gael contaminating his own party