Irish Political Economy: Housing and the Middleman State

1966 Housing Act

- allowed local authority tenants in urban areas to purchase their homes

- by the early 1990s, 220,000 of the 330,000 public housing units in the state had been sold to tenants

From a housing market to a mortgage market

“One of the old ghosts in the residential market was laid to rest this week by Mr. Edmund Farrell, chairman of the Irish Permanent Building Society, when he revealed that the purchase of a new home is not necessarily the biggest single lifetime investment – simply because the average building society mortgage has itself a lifetime of only about ten years.

The significance of this information is considerable, and it does much to explain the frenzy of activity both in the residential market and in the £150 million Irish building societies’ movement. If the average mortgage is ‘turned over’ once in a decade, the average man can buy not one, but two or three different homes in his working life.”

Irish Times, 10 February 1973.

1974 Kenny Report

1975 – Commercial banks enter the mortgage market on a wide scale

1984 Surrender Grant Scheme

1988 – Section 23 Tax Relief reintroduced

1988 – Local autorities bow out of residential mortgage provision

1991/92 – high-point of owner-occupancy in Ireland – 79 per cent.

1999 – Rural Renewal Scheme – Shannon area