September 14, 2003
Das Kapital
During the summer, at a Summer School, Tom Parlon (former IFA leader and now Progressive Democrat junior minister) declared that plans to limit the price of development land (i.e. land approved for house-building) was an idea 'somewhere to the left of Stalin'. No doubt the PDs have a very long list that they would consider on the other side of Big Joe, and given that it was an idea floated by Eamonn Gilmore, of the Labour Party and late of the Democratic Left parish, you could see how Tom would be agin it. And am I the only one who was wondering how Tom got invited to a Summer School in the first place?
The idea sounds great - stop big industrialists from driving up the price of houses by fixing the price of the most expensive constituent in a new house - the land it is built upon. Alas, it is not so straightforward. For a start, many housebuyers are in the market for secondhand houses - they would not be affected. The second problem is that, in Ireland, a house is the most favoured form of investment. For each modestly-paid PAYE worker trying to save up to buy a starter house in some soulless estate at the fringes of one of our cities, there is a lawyer, accountant or businessman/woman bidding for the same house so that he/she can rent it out to the aforementioned and hapless PAYE worker. The only way to combat this inclination is to encourage the self-employed business-people to invest in something else. And I haven't heard too many plans for that.
Still, it was a good soundbite…
Posted by Monasette at September 14, 2003 11:05 PM | TrackBack