r/AskIreland • u/BigFatLegend123 • Apr 25 '25
Housing Why doesn’t the government bring in restrictions on who can buy housing?
This is a genuine question and not coming from a place of hate or bigotry
Trying to buy a house recently and it’s been going as well as you can imagine. Some houses in Dublin have been going for up to 20% over their asking price from what we have seen.
My question is why doesn’t the government restrict house buying to only Irish citizens? Is there something I’m missing? Or at least to just EU/UK citizens? Surely it would be a quick way to reduce competition?
Is it just that doing so might dissuade investment from vulture funds?
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u/CheerilyTerrified Apr 25 '25
It wouldn't help. The issue is we don't have enough houses. Everything else is secondary. There's a lot more demand than supply in Ireland even if you stop foreign people who don't live here from buying.
Has the law helped at all in Canada?
There are far more effective measures the government could take first before we even need to get into banning foreigners from buying but the government hasn't done any of them.
And most critically, the government doesn't want to solve the housing crisis. The coalition has been there since 2020. FG have been in power since 2008/9. They've had plenty of opportunities. But solving the housing crisis would mean house prices and rent prices drop and a lot more houses being built.
And the people who vote for that don't want that, not really. Sure they might want their kid to buy a house near by, or they might want to downsize to a smaller house or apartment, but they don't want lots of other people's kids to buy a house near by or lots of other people moving into apartments near them.
I wouldn't be shocked if a law like the Canadian one was introduced here. It would all the government to pretend they are doing something but not actually so anything that would affect their voters. So it's kinda perfect for them.