A CABINET SUBCOMMITTEE meeting will be held tomorrow focussed on developing solutions to the housing crisis, with a junior minister saying the Government would be looking at “all different actions”.

Speaking to RTÉ’s the Week in Politics programme, government chief whip and junior minister Mary Butler refused to be drawn on whether tax breaks for developers or bringing an end to Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs).

Both measures were floated this week by senior Government members as possible measures to increase investment in the housing sector, but were met with strong resistance from the Opposition. 

Taoiseach Micheál Martin first said the Government was prepared to “examine” a change in terms of the rent caps, before rowing back saying he won’t pre-empt the results of review into the controls. Later in the week, Martin confirmed the Government is exploring possible tax breaks for private housing developers. 

A memo will also go to Cabinet next week allocating a substantial funding increase towards the delivery of housing, it is understood.

The additional monies comes alongside the updated National Planning Framework (NPF), which is set to be discussed and cleared at the first Cabinet subcommittee on housing meeting taking place tomorrow

However, Butler said today she did not know what measures were going to be discussed tomorrow.

“I’m not sure exactly what’s going to be discussed at the meeting, but what I do know is that no decision has been made yet,” he said.

“In the programme for government, it was stated quite clearly that we would look at the RPZ, the Rent Pressure Zones, that they would be looked at.

There is nothing new in that, they are going to be looked at. That was one of the recommendations of the [Housing] Commission as well.

She said all measures “will be looked at”, and that the sector needed substantial investment to significantly ramp up supply.

Opposition reaction

The Government’s approach was criticised by Social Democrats TD Sinead Gibney, who also appeared on the programme.

“There is a place for those solutions within a broader housing policy,” Gibney said, referring to some of the measures outlined.

“But their own Commission has told them that they need a radical reset of that policy, and they are not doing that.

They are doubling down on policy which has clearly been proven not to work. 

Gibney said the Social Democrats were calling for “greater protections” for renters and not “a shredding of the very poor protections that are already there”.

“And we need to close those loopholes, and we need to focus on affordable social housing delivered by this state. That’s where we should be.”

Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire also took aim at the Government, saying that was place for private investment in the housing market, but that “it has to be on the basis of sensible investments that are not exploitive, that do not lead to the increased escalation in house prices and rent prices of the kind that we’ve seen the last couple of years”.

“In my view, renters will be thrown to the fire,” he said.

“And the fact is that the government is now doubling down on some of the mistakes that they have made over the last number of years. They are encouraging policies that push house prices up radically and quickly. 

“They are encouraging policies that increase rental [prices] and I have to say, I’m really, really concerned when we saw the increase in rents and house prices over the course of the last term in government.

I’m really concerned what things will look like at the end of this term in Government.