Budget 2025: Build budget on fair housing policies

HOUSING will be one of the talking points of Budget 2025, with a demand for more funding for local authorities to build social and affordable homes.

There are also calls for the vacant-homes tax to be increased and for funding to be ringfenced to hold a referendum on the right to housing next year.

In the last budget, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said the Government’s efforts to tackle vacancy and dereliction would “continue unabated” with the Croí Conaithe fund (which provides the money for the Vacant and Derelict Property Refurbishment Grant and the Ready to Build Scheme) “increased substantially for 2024”.

He said the “carrot approach” would be “carefully balanced with the stick approach” of the vacant-homes tax, which was increased at the last budget.

Anti-dereliction campaigners Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry, who are the founders of Anois design agency, said that the upcoming budget presents a “brilliant opportunity” to transfer the responsibility of dereliction-levy collection from the local authorities to the Revenue and thus improve collection rates.

They also said the vacant-homes tax should be increased further.

“The budget also presents a timely opportunity to increase the vacant-homes tax to international levels of 5%, which would pressurise owners to release the properties back on the market,” they told The Echo.

Social Democrats councillor for the city’s South Central ward, Pádraig Rice, said he would also like to see the vacant-homes tax increased.

“Too many buildings in Cork are vacant and derelict,” Mr Rice said.

“I want to see the vacant-homes tax increased to at least 5%, with clear and fair exemptions.

“This would send a strong message to those sitting on empty houses: Use it, sell it, or rent it. It’s not acceptable that people leave houses empty that could be homes,” he said.

Mr Rice said while the Government states that housing is a “top priority”, he believes insufficient progress is being made and that increased funding should be provided for the delivery of social and affordable housing.

“Rents are unaffordable, house prices have skyrocketed out of reach for people on average incomes, and too many adults are stuck at home in their childhood bedrooms.

“We have to start doing things differently. Last year, just over 30,000 new houses were built when all the experts agree that we need at least 50,000 new homes per year. This 20,000 shortfall is the reason things are so bad.

“I want us to build 50,000 new homes as quickly as possible. But they can’t be any kind of homes: They have to be genuinely affordable. Houses that cost almost €400k aren’t affordable.

“In the past, the State played a much greater role in building new homes that people could afford,” Mr Rice said.

“I want to see that happen again. In this budget, more money must be provided to local authorities so that they can build more homes for people.

“What better way to spend the €13bn Apple money than on building homes for people in need?”

The Government, he said, must also introduce better protections for renters.

“The new UK government has committed to ending no-fault evictions.

“We should follow suit,” Mr Rice said.