Just on this....do the EU rules on borrowing still apply? I think these were/are a godsend to be honest..At the very least we should be looking to legislate a debt brake like in Germany. Politicians have proven they are likes kids in a sweet shop so lets remove the temptation away from them....
Boss does your resettlement of the poorer classes to the nether regions not smack of ethnic cleansing?
Would changing the prsi/universal tax into a personnel health plan be a way to go.
At the moment, a working young couple in their mid twenties who want to buy a house, will make huge sacrifices. They will save up hard. They might even live with their parents to save rent. They will defer having a child until they have bought a house. And they will probably buy the house in Dundalk or Gorey if they are working in Dublin. When they buy the house, they will pay VAT, a development levy and a social housing levy so that people who don't pay their own way can be housed.
On the other hand someone who depends on social welfare will declare themselves homeless and demand to be housed in their own community.
We need to reverse this. We need to say to people that if you want social housing, it will be close to where you work or if you are not working it will be commuting distance away. And if you get work in the future, you will qualify for housing close to where you work.
So it's not ethnic cleansing. It's reversing the negative incentives we have at the moment.
The above party policy has the DNA of FF/FG/LAB not a word about fairness ,I was appalled by the last government's reckless financial management. With the economy booming, artificially high corporation tax takes, low unemployment, we just about managed to balance the government's books. We made no progress on reducing government debt. They have committed to wasting billions on rural broadband when we will need those people to build houses. And they introduced rent controls when they knew that would reduce the supply of rental accommodation. They made an unsustainable pension system worse by extending it to self-employed people who contribute 4% a year in PRSI.
But Fianna Fáil wouldn't have been any more responsible. They insisted on higher pension payments when the pensions system is already unsustainable.
So we ended up with an election characterised by auction politics. And Sinn Féin won the auction by outbidding the others with borrowed money.
I would like to vote for a party which says
- We will cut taxes for people who work and cut social welfare for people who don't.
- We will convert the prsi paid by people and their employers into an account in their own name. Their retirement date and amount of pension will be determined by how much they have in their pension fund. People who have depended on social welfare their whole life will no longer get the same pensions and benefits in retirement as people who have worked all their life.
- Convert all public sector and politicians' pensions to generous defined contribution schemes
- We will prioritise low paid workers in the allocation of social housing. People who are not working will be allocated social housing wherever in the country it is cheapest to buy or build
- If people are not working, we will not give them rent assistance to live in a Rent Pressure Zone. We will only help them outside the high demand areas. This will bring down rents for everyone.
- The 10,000 people living on their own in 2,3 and 4 bed social houses will be asked to share with others or else vacate them.
- We will help people who want to provide their own housing rather than penalising them. We will abolish VAT, development levies and social housing requirements on starter homes. We will allow people to borrow the deposit for their first home from their pension fund.
- Instead of spending €450k to buy a privately built house for social housing, we will sell off high value social housing to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to build more social housing wherever it is cheapest.
- We will help people who are having difficulty with their mortgage payments who are making a serious effort to pay, but we will speed up the repossession of for those borrowers who are paying nothing and making no effort.
- We will stop demonising good landlords. Phase out rent controls as rents will fall when the state stops paying rent in RPZs for people who are not working. Limit the RTB to resolving disputes, but scrap all the other bureaucracy such as registering tenancies. Help tenants who have difficulty paying their rent, but evict tenants who make no effort.
- We admit that it's very difficult for the public service to run a good hospital system. And throwing public money at it hasn't worked.
- We will charge people for healthcare in a public hospital.
- We will encourage people who can afford it to pay for their own private healthcare and we won't demonise them for doing so.
- People who can afford to do so, should pay in full for their own carers and their own nursing homes.
- Take a big knife to cutting out whole departments and bodies which do nothing except
- Give the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council or the Central Bank the authority to set the overall budget policy - a budget deficit or budget surplus as they deem appropriate. The government would set its own tax and spending decisions within those limits.
At the very least we should be looking to legislate a debt brake like in Germany. Politicians have proven they are likes kids in a sweet shop so lets remove the temptation away from them....
bring the IMF back to sort it out.
The one thing I hate is all this talk about right and left wing politics. It doesn't exist in Ireland. We have some of the highest social transfers in the developed world and from listening to people, it sounds like we have been run by right wing fascist nuts since the foundation of the State.
Interesting article below about how they go about this in the Netherlands. It could be something useful to look at here..So give the Central Bank or the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council control of Fiscal Policy. It would be a bit like the Troika. This is how much the deficit or surplus will be - now you decide yourselves how much to raise in taxes and where you are going to spend the money.
Interesting article below about how they go about this in the Netherlands.
Define people who are "not working". I've a family member who has not done a day's paid work in 3 years as she is a carer for her mother. Thankfully housing is not an issue for them but under your rules, if they had a need for social housing would they get it?
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