The Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI) has called for the establishment of a new ‘housing company of Ireland’ to undertake the construction and acquisition of 70,000 new homes and resolve the housing crisis. The trade union-backed think tank said this new body should be a semi-state company, which could draw on relatively cheap long-term borrowing, as well as funds from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, to supplement the housing programmes of local authorities and voluntary housing associations.

In a recently-published report, NERI says the new housing company could crack a housing crisis in which fewer than 4,000 rental dwellings were available last month, compared to 23,000 in 2009. It said average rents increased at an annual rate of over 13% in 2016, and are now higher than in 2008.

The report, Ireland’s housing emergency: Time for a game changer, calls for a fundamental rethink of social housing models in Ireland, with the adoption of “European norms of mixed-income renting provided by public enterprises,” and funded and operated in ways that don’t add to public expenditure or debt.

Resolving the housing crisis will “require a high degree of societal and political consensus that the solution to this problem necessitates a 'whatever-it-takes’ approach. That there is a crisis of housing may very well signal a deeper crisis of public values and choice in so far as the balance between private and public interest has been too far weighted towards the private,” it says.