Call to levy all residential purchases to pay for social housing

A 1% levy on all residential property purchases would have a far greater positive impact on social housing provision than planning legislation.

The claim was made by Construction Industry Federation president, Philip Crampton at the organisation’s annual conference in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Crampton suggested that the levy would have created a fund of €60m for social housing in the last year — a far greater amount than would be raised by the ‘Part V’ section of proposed planning legislation.