29 April 2025
IPAV welcomes housing activation office but warns that emergency planning powers are needed
Welcoming the announcement today by Minister for Housing James Browne TD of the setting up of a Housing Activation Office, IPAV, the Institute of Professional Auctioneers & Valuers, said to succeed in delivering housing it will need unprecedented measurers such as emergency planning powers and positive tax incentives to encourage development.
Pat Davitt, IPAV’s Chief Executive said: “We’re now in the second quarter of the year and agents continue to report prices running substantially above asking prices in many areas.
“This is as a result of very scarce supply and those with means chasing few available properties. This is neither sustainable nor healthy from an economic or social perspective.”
He said IPAV welcomed this new development of the Housing Activation Office but warned that it needs to be supported with emergency planning powers to achieve results.
“Such powers are required for a period of time to address the issue of the common good being trumped by individual rights, with objections to what are very often reasonable development proposals,” he said.
And he said it is a worry that the new Activation Office will, according to today’s statement, ‘sit alongside existing divisional structures in the Department’.
“That would seem to imply that it will not have strong powers. With due respect to many individuals within that system it has proved itself to have an inability to understand property market dynamics, and therefore, been responsible for the unintended consequences of a myriad of regulations over many years.”
He pointed to the Housing Commission report initiated by the last Government which identified that over several decades there have been a range of interventions that have not resolved failures that are, according to the Commission “fundamentally systemic.”
The Commission also identified as core issues, “ineffective decision making and reactive policy making where risk aversion dominates.”
IPAV has recently said that the Government needs to rise above and confront misinformation, such as that which says the previous Section 23 tax incentive was responsible for the last housing crisis.
The Section 23 tax incentive was a huge success, the fact that it went on longer than it should have and was extended far beyond what was wise doesn’t negate the fact that it was a success in getting homes built, the organisation said.
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