Housing experts claim Rent controls will not work

Two of the country’s top housing experts have said rent price controls will likely do little good, even as leading Coalition ministers continue to hotly disagree over limited measures to help cool the rental market.

Amid an apparent difference of opinion between Environment Minister Alan Kelly and Finance Minister Michael Noonan on the best way to tackle the housing crisis, widely anticipated measures were notably missing from last week’s pre-election budget.

As long ago as last February, Mr Kelly was hailed by the Labour Party Conference after saying he was readying a package of measures to cool an explosion in rental costs and rein in landlords from hiking up private rents. Such measures, he said, would not necessarily involve rent controls but could involve linking rents to the cost of inflation and other measures that provide private tenants with what is known as “rent certainty”.