Ministers are just plain cuckoo
THIS week’s muppet show from that fully detached madhouse on Kildare Street starred Darragh O’Brien in a twohander with Paschal Donohoe.
O’Brien, whose political career is now showing all the signs of shattering like a windscreen, thinks he’ll stop so-called cuckoo investor funds bulk-buying houses by tacking on a couple of conditions to future planning permissions for housing.
Thing is, there’s a huge build-up of residential planning permissions over the past few years that has still not been developed – 30,000 in 2018 and 40,000 in 2019. Last year, CSO figures show a decline in permissions, but there were still about 16,500 permissions in the first six months alone.
Given that only 40,000 homes were actually delivered in 2019 and 2020 combined, this means there are still tens of thousands of houses in the pipeline, with full planning. So the impact of O’Brien’s directive to planners won’t be felt for at least a couple of years (if at all).
His sloth-like reaction to this existential national crisis was underlined by his own extraordinary gaffe on the wireless during the week when he blurted out how his concern at the bulk-buying of homes first arose about 18 months ago in his own area. That’s EIGHTEEN months ago.
Tell Dessie Farrell we’ve a nippy corner forward for him.
Meanwhile, Paschal Donohoe’s pincer movement on the cuckoo funds has an equality of the absurd about it. He believes his 10% stamp duty on investors who buy 10 or more houses in a single development will put a stop to their gallop.
Which prompts the question: why didn’t he slap on 20%, even 50% stamp duty instead, since – if he’s right about 10% having the desired effect – those higher rates would have made no difference at all to investors?
The answer, of course, is obvious. As planning expert and university lecturer Lorcan Sirr has said: ‘You can’t [but] think these were not designed to make much of a difference.’