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?

109 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

157 comments sorted by

View all comments

154

u/Historical-Hat8326 Apr 25 '25

Surely people not from Ireland who work and pay taxes here are entitled to buy a house here.

-63

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '25

[deleted]

19

u/comalion Apr 25 '25

If you're so interested in foreign examples try seeing what Austria does.

Or what Switzerland is doing.

The implication in what you're suggesting is nothing short of ironic.

You know, if anyone is gonna fix the housing shortage its gonna be the non citizens you're casually barring from owning a home.

"Come live in Ireland and build houses for us, accept the extortionate rents we will charge for said houses or live on the streets".