Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that serious questions are hanging over the current\u00a0 \u2018Help to Buy Scheme\u2019 following figures released by Daft.ie showing huge jumps in house prices in the first three months of the year and information gleaned recently from Parliamentary Questions.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said that there needs to be greater scrutiny including a full review into the current scheme before even more damage is done to house hunters and the overall housing market.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Sinn Fein\u2019s view this scheme was always suspect and a sticking plaster approach that favoured developers and speculators.\u00a0 It is, at its core is a demand side solution to a supply side problem.\u00a0 It has directly led to the massive hike in house prices we are currently seeing, where prices in Dublin have risen by an average of \u20ac17,500 in the first three months of this year. These increases cannot be sustained. It is workers and by extension compliant taxpayers, not developers and speculators who are having to pay the real cost<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it was initially proposed, with Fianna F\u00e1il facilitating it, the Minister under pressure agreed to a review after it was introduced. With these spiralling increases this needs to happen now.<\/p>\n
\u201cFigures Sinn F\u00e9in have obtained through Parliamentary Questions show that applications already submitted means that the estimated cost of the scheme could easily be exceeded. Currently there is no cap on the scheme and nothing to prevent it becoming another run-away cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe original scheme was in reality a financial bribe to developers to increase the supply and building of housing. Meanwhile the State and hard pressed Irish taxpayers at a time of housing shortage and huge demand are being strong armed, to \u2018pay up\u2019 in order to supposedly keep the supply of housing flowing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely as long as we continue with this state policy of subsidising and relying on private developers and speculators we will continue to have this problem. The Irish Government clearly needs to deal with the supply problem by taking ownership and going back to allowing local authorities to directly or indirectly build social housing for its applicants.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrice spikes and uncertainty like this only benefit the speculators, the hoarders, and the banks. This current broken scheme is being subsidised by Irish tax payers and needs to be urgently reviewed before even more damage is done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIronically the Help to Buy Scheme is rewarding many of those who created the housing crash and penalising those, who through no fault of their own, are its victims. House hunters are again trapped in the spiral of rising house prices.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that serious questions are hanging over the current\u00a0 \u2018Help to Buy Scheme\u2019 following figures released by Daft.ie showing huge jumps in house prices in the first three months of the year and information gleaned recently from Parliamentary Questions. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said that there needs to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[310,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-time-buyers","category-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3068,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions\/3068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}