Professor Michelle Norris:

I thank the Chair and members of the committee for the invitation. I chaired the Housing Commission's tenure and community subcommittee, which examined the rented housing sector. It contributed about half of the recommendations of the commission's report and these set out a comprehensive plan for improving the availability, affordability and quality of rented housing. Among these recommendations the most important in my view is that 20% of the housing stock should be provided outside the market as social and cost rental. This is necessary because the private rental sector does not have the capacity to provide sufficient affordable housing to meet the needs of large sections of the population. Implementing the recommendation would mean that the current size of the social and cost-rental housing sector in Ireland would need to double. This in turn would require comprehensive reform of arrangements for financing and delivering this type of housing. The commission sets out a detailed plan for this encompassing linking rents for housing to the costs of delivery to provide a stable source of revenue for managing and maintaining the dwellings and servicing debt to provide the dwellings; providing housing allowances like HAP to tenants who cannot pay the cost rents and also allowing groups of local authorities to set up shared organisations called local authority housing organisations to provide and manage their social housing. That would overcome the capacity problems in the sector at the moment and allow local authorities to recruit and retain the expert staff they need to provide housing.

The commission report also sets out a comprehensive plan for reforming regulation of rented housing. We propose amalgamating the patchwork of regulatory organisations, regulating local authority housing for the first time and strengthening regulatory enforcement. We propose comprehensive reform of the system of rent pressure zones, RPZs, which was introduced as an emergency measure in 2016 to regulate private rents and was never intended to be in place over the long term. RPZs only cover part of the country and limit rent increases to 2% per annum. The rationale for the 2% cap is unclear and the commission was concerned it applies irrespective of the quality of the dwelling and how far below market the rent is. We propose replacing RPZs with a reference rent system used to regulate rents in many other European countries. This is a nationwide system that would peg rent increases to dwellings of similar quality and location. The system could be designed strategically to better balance the interests of tenants and landlords and incentivise better outcomes by, for instance, pegging rent increases to building energy ratings. Once in place, the regulator would conduct regular evidence-based reviews of the system and amend the regulations as appropriate in a similar fashion to the way that the Central Bank regulates mortgage markets. This would help to depoliticise the debate about rent regulation, strengthen the evidence base for policy and provide greater certainty for tenants and landlords.