When you have scarce resources and put property developers ahead of post grad students.......
What's so special about post grads? For God sake if you haven't had the state pay enough towards your education by the time you're 22 you may as well throw your hat at it.
As for property incentives vs disincentives:
Point 1:
There's not too many property developers left in business. We, the owners of NAMA, are the biggest property developers going these days. So getting transactions in the market will benefit us financially.
Point 2:
On balance the disincentives in the market are huge. Sentiment is terrible and credit is non-existent.
Point 3:
Whilst taxation incentives certainly promoted building well beyond what was required you have to agree that stamp duty rates through the boom (9% on residential property in excess of €635k for example) should have been a huge disincentive to transactions. Unfortunately cheap credit drowned out any element of price consciousness.
Point 4:
The problem in the boom was that the default position of 'you cannot build enough or own enough property' was held long after it ceased to be sensible. The equivalent braindead mantra now would be to hold the view that 'property is toxic and will always be toxic' long beyond the point where we need to start investing effort into it again.
Point 5:
It is sensible for now to continue to build 25% of the long term required average units for a few more years. The overhang built up through a 3/4 years of building 300% of the required output means this is sensible. But in 5/6 years time we will have to start building at long term levels again. Right now we should be encouraging the people who would have purchased in normal conditions (young couples, families, etc) to take advantage of the unoccupied overhang.
In short, property should be treated as any other commodity, there is a sensible and sustainable level of consumption. If there is overconsumption then it should be discouraged. If there is underconsumption we need to provide incentives and not "punish" the property market by consistently discouraging or even barring people from even considering owning a home for themselves.
The legacy of the property bust should not be to stigmatise home ownership. That is a long term solution to nothing.