There is no division at Cabinet level over measures to address the rate of rental increases, according to Minister for Finance Michael Noonan and Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly.
Speaking in Limerick, where the two Ministers announced 23,000 new jobs as part of the Government’s Mid-West Action Plan for Jobs, Mr Noonan and Mr Kelly dismissed reports of “ill-tempered exchanges” in ongoing Government talks aimed at bringing rent certainty to the market to tackle the housing crisis.
Mr Kelly’s rent certainty proposals would see residential rents linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Mr Kelly said: “I am always prepared to work with anyone to solve this issue.
“But the figures that are facing us in relation to the volume of people who are in difficulty in relation to their rent, and the volume of children that could be affected as a consequence of the way in which a certain number of landlords are looking at increasing rents, is a big, big problem, and certainly morally as a Government we are going to have to look at it and deal with it.
“The whole housing issue is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, issue facing the Government.
“Most of it was not budgetary related, so it was being dealt with separately as part of a separate process and I hope that process will be concluded in the coming weeks.”
Mr Kelly rejected suggestions that he was unwilling to compromise in negotiating rent certainty targets and insisted that he is dedicated to bringing forward a package in relation to rent in the coming weeks as part of the ongoing discussions.
“I am always willing to look at all measures across the board from everywhere, so I believe a package will come together and I am certainly not somebody who is unwilling to discuss every avenue.
“I believe the most important thing we have to do is to ensure that people stay in their homes.
“I certainly am the person who ends up dealing with the consequences of it but I am not the Minister who has the levers to actually deal with preventing many of these people from being turfed out of their homes or leaving their homes.
“I want to ensure a cross-Government approach that has levers that are activated to make sure that people are kept in their homes, because coming up to Christmas I don’t want to see issues whereby people are being turfed out because of rent increases or any other issues or to see children who haven’t got homes for Christmas, because that to me is unacceptable.”
Tough negotiations
Mr Noonan said tough negotiations still need to take place between Government departments before a decision on rent certainy is announced.
“The next phase is to further address the supply side of housing and the rental area and our departments are working together, and Alan and I are working together, to come up with solutions,” he said.
“I am not diminishing the problem, it’s a huge problem, did you ever think when we were talking three or four years ago that we would have moved from ghost estates with no one to live in empty houses, to a position where we don’t have enough houses?
“The swing as the economy grew has been very, very rapid and we have the problems now of success . . . where previously we had the problem with failure, but we will work together to address them.”
Mr Noonan and Mr Kelly made their comments at Limerick Institute of Technology, where the Government launched the Mid-West Action Plan for Jobs, which aims to deliver 15 per cent employment growth in the region by 2020.
The plan is the fourth of eight regional jobs plans to be published as part of a new €250 million regional jobs strategy led by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton.
If successful, the implementation of the plan for Co Clare, Co Limerick and Co Tipperary would see the creation of 23,000 jobs in the region by 2020.
Howlin statement
Meanwhile, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin has supported calls to introduce rent certainty.
Mr Howlin said rent certainty was necessary to solve the housing issue in the short-term.
“How to go about that in a sustainable way that doesn’t do harm to the market is what all of us in Government are combining our efforts to resolve.”
Speaking at a Chartered Accountants Ireland lunch, Mr Howlin said the CPI proposal would not harm the market.
“Consumer Price Index is one anchor that would be perfectly understood.”
Mr Howlin said the housing issue would be addressed by the Government, but that supply issues would take up to two years to resolve.
Mr Howlin said: “It takes up to 18 months to identify sites, secure sites, get contractors and build houses.
“In the interim we are looking at every other means we can to address what is a major social issue.”
Mr Howlin said that the issue is not easy to solve but the Government is committed to increasing supply to match the demand that is there.