And so it begins. Election 2007

26 days

Hard not to think it was a bit fluffed. Two reasons strike me for saying that. Firstly the fact it was called on a Sunday and that he didn’t wait until next week, but instead had to meet the President just prior to her departure from the country to the United State. Secondly the mention in the Sunday Independent of this:

Meanwhile, the Fianna Fail leader will announce stamp-duty reforms to be implemented before the Dail rises for the summer. The changes are to be promised in the election manifesto.

The focus of the legislation is to improve the lot of first-time buyers - but it is possible that other changes will be introduced as well.

No doubt any such change will earn the undying gratitude of the Sunday Independent. Too late perhaps, too late. But in the scheme of things I’m with Vincent Browne on this as when he wrote last week in the Sunday Business Post that:

But the tax strategy group found that the previous reductions in stamp duty did not improve ‘‘liquidity’’ in the secondhand home market, which means it did not result, for example, in more older people selling their homes.

Anyway, how could mobile workers benefit from a reduction in stamp duty? The laws of supply and demand will dictate the price at which they sell their house and the price for which they buy their new house. Stamp duty is irrelevant.

If I may illustrate my point: assume there is a demand for 10,000 houses at €400,000 plus 7 per cent stamp duty, which means a total of €428,000 per house. If stamp duty is removed, it doesn’t mean those houses will be sold for €400,000; they will be sold for €428,000.

This is, and in a way it’s necessary to make this clear, a very different discussion to the issue of making it ‘easier’ for first time buyers to purchase housing. I and others have already mentioned the difficulties, or more accurately, the impossibility of getting housing or accomodation in the current market situation. But that requires much greater and more efficacious interventions on the part of state and semi-state in the housing market.

And then there’s the Mahon Tribunal. Pat Leahy in the Sunday Business Post today notes:

Lawyers for the tribunal will make an amended opening statement on the Quarryvale module, which is expected to draw on an investigation of the Taoiseach’s finances.

The Taoiseach, who has strenuously denied allegations by developer Tom Gilmartin that he received payments, has supplied the tribunal with extensive detail on his own finances.

So that should ratchet up the tension nicely. Although the Tribunal cannot sit for the last two weeks of the campaign. Although as Ben of Dublin Opinion asks in response to Maman Poulet’s post here, why did Ahern even open himself to the risk of the Tribunals and not go to the country last week? Perhaps he feels he has no reason to worry.

As if that weren’t enough, there is the rumbling annoyance on the part of Labour and other opposition parties regarding the on-going victory lap by Ahern throughout May over the Peace Process. It may well be ‘politicising the Peace Process’, but in fairness if Ahern can be said to have one lasting political achievement worthy of any Taoiseach his stewardship (and let’s not get into a debate as to the ownership of it) of the process is it. Anyhow, that’s politics and nothing on earth is going to stop Ahern from attending those events, and while the muttering may continue I doubt Labour will find it in their best political interest to make too much of it from here on in.

As noted previously, how this plays is anyone’s guess.

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I should add, on a personal level, a feeling of ‘meh’. Finally it arrives, and so what? We’ve known it was coming for years now. We’ve all had a fairly good sense as to when the date would be. That which is predictable generally tends in the end to be dull.

The next three or four weeks will be canvassing hell, for both those involved in canvassing and those who must go to the door to answer the dread knock. But if the canvassing isn’t done the politicians will be accused of not doing their job.

We’ll receive, and no doubt hand out, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of leaflets. Most won’t be read. Posters will be everywhere. Television spots. Debates.

Yep, it’s going to be a long May.