How Budget 2025 impacts our sector

In short, we at Hardware Association Ireland are satisfied with the outcome as the Minister for Finance has allocated a €6bn investment to housing overall. €186 million of this will go to the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF). As you know, over the past four years we have campaigned to put incentives in place to bring empty homes back to life. Rejuvenating empty homes is an important strand in our overall strategy that HAI has presented to Government to help solve the housing crisis. It is great to see some of our recommendations taken on board yesterday.

The granular details of this are currently being worked out by staff at the Department of Housing and we are urgently seeking meetings with senior officials in key departments to find out exactly how this will be spent.

Reducing business costs is another strand in our lobbying – as we go to press it is not clear whether some of these proposals have been accepted.

Many commentators have described it as somewhat of a ‘giveaway budget’ with a pending election continuing to hang in the air.

In terms of our sector, we will continue to engage in dialogue with the Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien TD and Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise Emer Higgins TD, in order to establish the key facts for the sector going forward

Here is an outlook of the overall performance of the budget relating to our sector.

Key Takeaways.

• The total budget package is €10.5 billion, with €2.2 billion allocated to ‘cost-of-living’, €6.9 billion in expenditure and a net tax package comprised of €1.4 bilblion.
• €186 million will be provided to the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) to continue to support each local authority’s programme of acquisitions under the URDF to tackle long term vacant and derelict properties in eligible URDF towns and cities.
• Record capital investment in housing of €6bn
• An additional €1.25 billion has been allocated to the Land Development Agency to accelerate the supply of affordable homes.
• The Vacant Property Tax has increased from 5 times LPT to 7 times the basic rate of Local Property Tax for the property. This will penalise those who willingly leave a home empty.
• €80 million has been allocated to the Croí Cónaithe Towns Scheme which will support the refurbishment of empty and derelict properties in towns, cities, and rural areas across the country.
• €30 million is provided for Croí Cónaithe Cities Scheme to support the building of apartments for sale to owner-occupiers by activating planning permissions already in place for such homes.
• The first-time buyer ‘Help-To-Buy’ scheme has been extended for another four years until the end of 2029.
• The Conservation Advice Grant Scheme also sees an increase in funding and support to help bring vacant traditional buildings back into residential use.
• Stamp duty on the bulk purchase of homes rises to 15% from 10%
• VAT on heat pumps to be lowered from 23% to 9%.
• The Residential Zoned Land Tax to go ahead as planned next year, with farmers excluded.
• A ‘mansion tax’, as they are calling it, worth 6pc for properties worth over €1.5m will be implemented.
• €2bn available for 10,000 new social homes.
• €31m will support the continued transition to a strategic planned maintenance programme for local authority social housing and the remediation of 2,300 vacant social homes for re-letting to households on housing waiting lists.
• €2.1bn to support accommodation for people fleeing the war in Ukraine and others seeking international protection.
• €3 billion allocated to infrastructure spending.
• National Minimum Wage will increase by 80 cent per hour to €13.50 from January 1^st, 2025.

We look forward to working with senior officials in the Department of Housing, and Department of Enterprise on this series of initiatives which will help alleviate the housing shortage and help to revitalise underused urban spaces across the country in an environmentally friendly way.

If you have any queries related to our response to Budget 2025 please contact us at 01 2980969.