Damien Mulley

Everyone’s fav property website (except maybe for Fianna Fáil, the Greens, Daft, MyHome and the developers) has done it again. They were first to point out that the Home Choice Loans scheme was dodgy as fuck and now they’ve raised it with the EU, who are going to investigate it. This is probably the next big scandal from the budget. Stay tuned here. This is people power and the web working for the common good.

Blurb:

After hundreds of contributors to website
http://www.thepropertypin.com recently lodged complaints with the EU.
The European Commission has now confirmed that it is to carry out
further investigations under EU State Aid laws regarding the
governments ‘Home Choice Loans’ scheme unveiled in Budget 2009.

Part of the complaint alleges that the scheme is a “Subsidisation Of
Certain Residential Property Developers” and “Distorts” the market in
favor of Big Developers carrying a heavy stock of unsold properties
across the country at the expense of buyers and tens of thousands of
existing sellers. Tom Parlon, Construction Industry Lobbyist is
credited with the successfully ring fencing of €1.65Bn of Tax Payers
money to bailout the developers via this scheme. Some commentators
estimate the true cost could rise to in excess of €6.5-10bn.

Such numbers put the medical card controversy into perspective while
also revealing the massive extent to which the governments appetite to
help an Tax incentivised and formerly profitable industry before the
public health interest into sharp contrast.

The Commission reference for the case is “CEL – CP300/2008 – Housing
Financing in Ireland”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under business, irishblogs, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.