My last column set out the first half of a proper cost rental system. Instead of it being set by an arbitrary discount off whatever the local market happens to be charging – the current system – cost rents should be anchored to what a home actually costs to build, finance, and manage. If you fix that anchor, then cost rents hold up in Waterford as reliably as they do in Dublin – and maybe more importantly, the State finally has a genuine stake in a level of construction costs it should be trying to bring down anyway. But a…

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