Housing Minister wants to hike help-to-buy tax refund
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What is the Housing Minister’s proposal for the Help‑to‑Buy tax refund?
The Claire Burns Show on News Talk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now we heard this morning that the Minister for Housing, James Brown, wants a boost to the help to buy tax refund for first time buyers, increasing it to fifty thousand euro. Thousands of homeowners have availed of that scheme since twenty sixteen, and now it seems he wants to increase the amount of money. that will be available. So can it work? Own O'Bryn is the Sinn Fein Housing spokesperson and TD for Dublin West and he's here with me in the studio. Carol Tallinn is CEO of Property District and PhD student researching spatial planning. Do you think this is a good idea, Owner Brynn, first?
No absolutely not. And the reason it's not a good idea is it's actually going to prevent a whole bunch of people who today are on a pathway to buying their own home who because it'll push up house prices will be prevented from doing so at the end of this year or next year if the minister gets his way.
So bottom line for you is the money goes straight onto the price of the house? Mm-hmm.
Uh this is one of three uh inflationary developer subsidies or demand side subsidies uh that is currently in place. Um they have played a role in house price inflation. CSO gave us the figures yesterday, uh uh about an extra 25,000 euros on the price of an average home uh uh over the last year. So if you put another 20,000 euros into that transaction, all that will do is push up house prices. That by that price. And there's an increasing layer of working people, single people and couples, hardworking people who 10 or 15 years ago would have had a very reasonable expectation that they would be able to buy a home. Every single percentage increase in house prices, so whether it's 1% or 5% or potentially 10%, which would arise from this, makes it ever more difficult for those people to buy their own homes and they'll be priced out of the market.
Mm-hmm. This does not help people, this actually makes people's situation worse. What it will also do uh is it'll mean some of those people uh who may still be able to buy a home will have larger mortgages, greater levels of debt, and that carries ever greater levels of risk. And for me, the really frustrating thing is. If you talk to builder developers, particularly the SME builder developer sector.
Why do critics say increasing the refund will push house prices higher?
They will tell you they want to bring down all in development costs and they want to be able to sell homes at lower prices. They have listed the things over and over again that would allow them to do that. We published uh a suite of measures back in 2024 to provide precisely for that, bring down development costs, reduce the amount of time it takes to get on site and build homes, and as a consequence, uh pass those savings on uh to uh buyers. Government is completely ignoring. Those proposals from Sinn Fein, but also that SME builder-developer sector. Instead, what they keep doing is pump priming the market and pushing up house prices. They've already almost doubled the rate of inflation for the price of apartments with James Brown's really disastrous moves over the last year.
Now, if he gets his way, and it looks like the Department of Finance and Finegel are opposed to the proposal, he's going to, at a time when house price inflation is beginning to soften a little, right, according to the figures yesterday. They're simply gonna push those prices up even more. Let's say. It's a bad move and there's a better way of helping people buy that home they want to buy. people let's buy that home they want to buy.
What Carol Tallinn thinks. I mean, do you see help to buy and increasing it as helping to increase house prices, new build house prices?
I do and good morning, Claire and Owen. Um well to start with, Owen and I agree that this is a badly targeted measure, but the question is not whether it's a good idea, it's whether it's a necessary step. And I suppose where Owen and I differ is that I understand you can't fix a bridge or demolish it while people are standing on it. And that's what's happening now. So um this is important because we we need remember that these thresholds haven't changed since 2020.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Housing Minister’s proposal for the Help‑to‑Buy tax refund?
0:01–2:05
2
Why do critics say increasing the refund will push house prices higher?
2:05–4:01
3
How does the current Help‑to‑Buy scheme affect first‑time buyers and inflation?
4:01–6:08
4
What is the difference between a tax refund and a grant in this context?
6:08–7:54
5
Will adding €20‑€50k to the scheme simply raise the price of homes?
7:54–9:33
6
What alternatives do experts suggest to lower development costs and house prices?
9:33–11:16
7
How could supporting SME builders and local authorities improve affordability?
11:16–13:21
8
What are the long‑term solutions proposed to stop the housing crisis from worsening?
13:21–14:42