Independent Ireland releases housing policy - Taking decisive action to address the housing crisis.

Declare a Housing Emergency, Lower Rents, Bring Builders Home, and Reform Planning

“What Ireland needs is common-sense housing reform and Independent Ireland has a comprehensive plan that begins with declaring a housing emergency. This will enable us to implement much-needed reforms to reduce rents, increase building, and reform the planning process,” said Independent Ireland TD Michael Fitzmaurice of Roscommon-Galway in remarks on 10th September.

“To reduce rents, we need not reinvent the wheel – we already have the necessary tools at our disposal. We will make all rents lower than €1,000 tax-free by extending the Accommodation Recognition Payment (ARP) to all landlords (not just those renting to Ukrainian refugees, who are currently ARP’s sole beneficiaries), and increase the allowable amount to €1,000 from €800. This will reduce inflationary pressure, deflate rent prices, and reduce government expenditure in Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) and other schemes. The Government would receive less in tax but spend less in HAP and other schemes, making it a win-win scenario. Most importantly, rents would come down,” said Independent Ireland Leader TD Michael Collins of Cork South West in remarks on September 10.

“To increase the housing stock, we need builders, but many have moved abroad. We will encourage Irish builders to return to Ireland from abroad by providing tax relief for five years to returnees via the Special Assignee Relief Program (SARP). This program already exists – we would just extend it to builders so that we can bring back skilled Irish tradespeople who our country desperately needs. This would not only address the housing shortage, but would fundamentally improve the state of our economy,” said TD Richard O Donohue of Limerick County.

“To reform the planning process, we will simplify and expedite the planning process for residential developments to reduce bureaucratic delays and encourage faster construction of new homes. We will also reform the planning framework – the process should be bottom-up. Local development plan feeds into county development plan, and subsequently into the national planning framework, not the other way around. By making these simple reforms, we will expedite construction, which will increase housing stock, and reduce the price of new homes,” said Cork City Cllr. Ken O’Flynn, who is a General Election candidate in Cork North Central.

The aforementioned proposals are a fraction of our comprehensive housing policy, which is available on our website. There you can find more information about how we will expand student housing construction, incentivise vacant property development, reform mortgage lending, reduce VAT on building materials, increase infrastructure funding for community and social housing, expand first-time buyer support, and more.

 Independent Ireland offers real solutions to real problems and we welcome your scrutiny. Most of our policies would be cost-neutral, and many make use of already-existing programs. These are common-sense solutions to Ireland’s housing crisis and we trust the Irish people will recognise a good idea when they see one.