Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have introduced rent restrictions in this country. I am just back from Berlin. The rent freeze there did not work at all; it had a completely dysfunctional impact on the market. We have to learn lessons. I read the daft.iereport. The fundamental point is that we need to build more houses. Building 20,000 houses a year is not enough. It is a huge factor in terms of where rents are. We have really to concentrate on getting houses built as fast as we possibly can. That means social and affordable houses and private development as well. Some of that will be private rental. The institutional funds represent about 7% of the rental market across the country, not the entirety of the market at all. As I have said repeatedly, of that 33,000 figure we expect 6,000 on an ongoing basis would be of a private rental nature but the bulk of it will be up to 10,000 social houses directly built through funding from the State through local authorities or approved social housing bodies. The biggest rent supports are through the housing assistance programme, HAP, and rental accommodation scheme, RAS, which are funded by the State and the taxpayer.

There is an enormous, unprecedented allocation of funding to get houses built in this country. Thankfully 31,000 homes were commenced in 2021, which really illustrates for the first time in quite a while that we are making progress. The pandemic and long lockdown did hit us and impact on construction and supply in 2020 and 2021 but we are catching up fast. The figure of 31,000 homes is the highest since 2008. We had about 20,400 completed in 2021 and the number of apartments completed increased by over 30%. We actually need that increase. We need a whole range of house and apartment types built if we are ever to get near the scale that we need to be at consistently over a ten-year period. There I times when I think people do not realise the scale of what is involved or the need to do what we have to do. About 46,000 homes were purchased in 2021, about 30% of which were bought by first-time buyers. There were nearly 40,000 planning permissions granted in the year to Q3 2021. In terms of the capacity of the industry, construction apprenticeship registrations in 2021 increased by over 40% compared to 2019. Employment in construction is back to pre-pandemic levels. Housing for All is working but it is going to take a number of years to get to where we want to be, unfortunately. Rent restrictions are in place; 2% or linked to the cost of living index.

See this speech in context