Ireland is Searching for Additional Construction Workers to Solve Housing Shortage

Ireland has a population growth of more than five times compared to the EU average. In the year 2017, Ireland’s population rose by 1.1% per annum, a lot larger than the average for the EU of .2%. Additionally, Ireland had the highest birth rate of any EU member with 12.9 births per 1000 people.

A growing population is great for the economy; however, it causes additional problems as well. One of these problems is a major housing shortage, especially within the more densely populated cities, like Dublin.

One of the roadblocks that Ireland faces with improving the housing shortage is the lack of construction workers. At the current rate, it will be nearly impossible to keep up with the growing population in densely populated Irish cities. Attracting construction workers from abroad could be a short-term fix and become long-term. Additionally, an increase in construction workers would stabilize pay and lower costs for construction companies. Professor Alan Ahearne, Director of Whitaker Institute and Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, is worried that a large influx of workers would …

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Should there be a tax on hoarding land?

There is evidence for property owners hoarding land because there is an expectation for rising house prices in the future. However, this only contributes to the housing shortage crisis. If the budget for 2018 included such a tax for property owners who choose to hoard land, it will give a financial incentive to build on the land now.

Property taxes are supposed to reflect the market value on the properties but all the valuations have been halted leaving a lot of room for political unrest.

Increasing the property tax, according to John Fitzgerald from the Irish Times, will give the government extra proceeds to fund for housing. This will give incentive to better utilize properties and give extra cash to the government to help out with the housing shortage.

It will also allow people with homes help the …

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The Creche Crash

As I am a soon to be dad the talk of crèche fees has suddenly started to appear in my day to day conversations with greater regularity, a part of me thought ‘how will the recession affect crèches?’. One part says ‘people will use a crèche more in order to work more hours so they can get by’ and another is countering with ‘if one person in a couple is made redundant then they may opt to stay at home and mind children rather than work to afford somebody else doing the same for them’. Having talked it through with several colleagues the opinion seems to be that if they, or their partner were to find themselves out of work that the choice of staying at home to mind the children would be a viable option.

The interesting point in modern Ireland is that a homemaker parent is no longer standard middle class in their profile, they tend to be either lower income or higher income, and the middle class are predominantly the ones where …

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Banks ARE lending, just not freely or irresponsibly

I have read several articles in this week in our  national papers and in them the authors said ‘banks are not lending’ and in one it was implied that this was somehow wrong. A point of order must be raised, firstly, it’s not wrong and secondly they actually are lending, just not freely or irresponsibly.

The frustrating thing is that even after all of the fallout, all of the crashing property prices, all of the international crisis news, that so many people still don’t get it. Cheap credit and easy lending is what go us here to begin with, we won’t fix the Irish economy with more mortgages being freely available.

Lobbyists take note: While you might strong-arm or influence the Government (I don’t know which method lobbyists use but either way they are effective) into supplying money for mortgages via recapitalisation or Homechoiceloan or any other plan, the fact is that reasonable people will not sign up to it, they will buy when …

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