Nobody’s Perfect

at

“We cant let ideology get in the way of pragmatic policies or let the perfect be the enemy of the common good.”

Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien (above) on the public-private Cost Rental Scheme.

How imperfect?

James writes:

The Housing Finance Agency (HFA) will borrow, say, €200,000, in the taxpayer’s name, and give it as a loan to an Approved Housing Body (AHB) on a low fixed interest for a 30-year-term.

The council will deliver a cheap, serviced site. The AHB will build a home and then rent it to a taxpaying family at €1,200 euro per month, indexed linked, which means the taxpayer could pay €450,000 over 30 years.

A €200,000 mortgage could cost that taxpayer €300,000 over the 30 years with interest increases [AIB 5 year fixed]. The Government has yet to decide how or even if the AHB will repay that loan…

Anyone?

We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good in solving our housing crisis (Darragh O’Brien, Independent.ie)

RollingNews

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11 thoughts on “Nobody’s Perfect

    1. goldenbrown

      don’t worry about it Giggidygoo, there’s more important things in life to think about

      like that you’ll probably have a better chance of scoring a face value ticket to your next concert

      lol

      1. GiggidyGoo

        Them Daniel O Donnell tickets are too expensive. And now I can’t even have a cup of tea while eating me meals.

    2. The Bottler

      Tom Parlon & Co running rings around a hapless O’Brien who is floundering around, way above his paygrade. That little child eating dinner on the street sums up Eoghan Murphy’s legacy.

      1. A Lovely Horst

        Tom Parking isn’t running rings around anyone. The minister is just complicit. Bread and circuses.

  1. Anti Bots

    Yet again, the ignorant speak.. AHBs get up to a max of 30% capital funding to buy or build housing.. The rest is self financing. They generally do a very good job of managing housing – much better than the state has done in the past. Northern Ireland is one of the highest places in the word for AHBs. But the bots and the truth are never wrong. Goo / Shinners first in again.

  2. Bitnboxy

    Of all the nonsense swirling around about the government in the current febrile climate, it is best ignored and mostly noise from the usual suspects. It is, however, this very issue – housing – that will seal the fortunes, perhaps not of Fine Gael but certainly Fianna Fáil and maybe the Greens. The fate of Fianna Fáil thus lies in the hands of Darragh O’Brien and I would not be confident as to the outcome.

    Incredibly and against all advice from notable stakeholders in the area, O’Brien is continuing the pursue a policy, intoxicated ironically by his own ideology and hubris, that is guaranteed to drive up house prices and render a dysfunctional market even more dysfunctional. Added to this, the delightful spectre of further higher mortgage interest rates in the wake of the KBC departure as a result the “calcification” of the Irish banking landscape and that is even if banks will be willing to lend as I suspect they will likely become even more cautious out of necessity.

    In terms of shooting themselves in the foot and being tone deaf to the single most pressing issue of a generation of younger folks, Fianna Fáil could not do any worse with the shared equity and cost rental scheme.

    The trouble is, the Shinners, despite O’Broin and his oft vaunted expertise replete with glossy tome, are liable to make matters worse and not better if this brief lands on their lap in a few years. Still, they couldn’t do any worse than O’Brien at the moment.

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