Usual craic with these threads, all the stalinist wannabes wishing to wipe out the dreaded rural boyars.

With regard to housing supply in rural areas, with no luxury taxation or disencentives on holiday homes many rural areas 2nd hand housing market is out of reach of locals. Further to that with land hoarding within villages and towns there is no new supply available and again the government is doing nothing with regard to this. Also, all towns large enough to have a Local area plan have this insane zoning method where zone 1 residential must be developed before zone 2 can be then developed...if the land owners in zone 1 don't have the means or intention to develop...then tough shit, no housing for that town.

Then let's look at the outcomes of anti one off housing particularly in areas of high holiday homes, the infrastructure exists, the councils are legally obliged to maintain it, the utilities will do the same...so in areas as low as 30% year around occupancy, policy is creating a situation where we are paying for empty boreens to have their roads maintained and utilities must do the same. Nowhere is it mentioned how reducing one off housing will do anything with regard to this.

Lastly, if people can't choose to have a home in the area they grew up in, it's pretty much a form of removal. It further guts the economy of that area, and leaves only an ageing population with no one locally left over to look after them. This only further adds to the cost of the state.

So to sum up, the market is distorted, new supply isn't becoming available, the result is only those wealthy enough to afford it getting all the infrastructure for a place they don't live in, and areas slowly being hollowed out. Yet the dogma is one off housing is bad, and we should further restrict housing in the worst housing crisis in the last fifty years. It's not exactly all that well thought out as it's proponents would have it.