Over the past 10 years house prices in Ireland were driven to inappropriately high levels. This happened through a combination of government intervention (tax incentives), loose lending (up to 10 times salary) and an appeal to peoples fear of missing out on their chance of owning a home.

Falling house prices hurt those who bought at the peak of the bubble. Those who inflated the bubble knew that it would eventually collapse as all bubbles do, they did not care about First Time Buyers or young families that might be caught in negative equity. This should be kept in mind when the same people now profess to wish to help first time buyers by again stimulating the property market.

A house is one of if not the biggest purchase of a persons life and it makes no sense to argue that it is in that persons interest to pay any more that absolutely necessary for that purcahse.

High prices don't even help those who own property and wish to trade up. Trading from a 300K house to a 600K house at a time when prices fall by 10% means selling for 30K less but buying for 60K less.

Falling house prices hurt two groups more than any other. The first are those who stretched themselves too far to buy a house, and then couldn't keep up repayments when interst rates increased. These people need their house to be worth more than they owe in order to clear their debt and walk away from the property. It is unclear how many people find themselves in Negative Equity, owing more than their house is worth.

The other group who are hurt by falling house prices are developers. During the boom developers paid extraordinarily high prices for land. In order to break even on these deals developers need to build and sell houses at a certain price. The Construction Industry Federadion has attempted to convince the public that developers can't sell for less than this break even figure. The reality is that nobody has an automatic right to make a profit on a given deal. Houses must sell for their actual value which may be less than the cost of building them on expensive land.

Fianna Fail have intervened in the property market time and again through tax incentives to investors and the affordable housing scheme. They have succeeded in driving up house prices to a point where the average working couple can not afford an average home. Where individuals earning 50K are entitled to state assistance in purchasing a home.

IrishHomeTruths.com believes that it is time for the government to stop inflating Irelands property bubble. The Affordable housing scheme and all similar schemes serve only to keep prices high and out of the reach of the average buyer.