'Renters will be pathetically grateful for Budget 2025 - the housing crisis donkey carrying heaviest load'
'They get a token contribution in a market where national rents average €2,000 a month'
Renters will be pathetically grateful for the rise in the rent credit to a nice round figure of €1,000.
The private renter is the donkey of the housing crisis, their legs buckled from carrying the heaviest load of the burden for the past decade.
They got no help at all until last year, when the Government was reluctantly forced into giving renters a break. So any relief - after a decade of record rates - is most welcome.
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To increase it by €250 and backdate it to cover this year, will mean a lot in real terms for tenants forking out fortunes to a landlord every month. But it’s a token contribution in a market where national rents average €2,000pm.
It’s the least that can be done by the same Government who drove rents up as high as they could go before doing anything to control them. It’s a measure that simultaneously lines the pockets of landlords, because that €1,000 just goes back into paying exorbitant rents.
And landlords were kept sweet with a multi-million extension of the pre-letting expenses scheme, which will now run for a further three years.
Aside from renters, some homeowners were hammered with increased mortgage interest hikes over the past 18 months. They’ll benefit from the extension of the mortgage interest tax relief. The help to buy scheme continuing up to 2030 is also good news.
However, apart from appeasing renters with a credit worth around 5% of their annual rent, there was little in this budget to address the housing crisis.
Ideally, there should be a tax freeze in a market where rents continue to rise well above rent pressure zone rates, and where family homes routinely rent for €5,000pm.
Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty pointed out how the budget would not account for one extra social and affordable home, which he reminded us was against the state’s own housing commission recommendations.
This is not good enough at a time when we have record rents, record homelessness and house prices surpassing Celtic Tiger levels.
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