Housing shortage ‘will cost Ireland key jobs’ warn business leaders

Thousands of new jobs are at risk of being lost to Ireland because of the housing crisis, business leaders warned.

Representative bodies and business owners have urged the appointment of a dedicated housing minister by any new government to tackle the severe lack of accommodation which is stunting job creation.

While many Irish businesses are now looking to expand and multinational companies are seeking to lure staff on secondment from other countries, the major shortage of housing, coupled with soaring rents, is preventing job growth.

The owner of Cork-based multinational outsourcing company Voxpro said he may be forced to divert hundreds of new positions away from Ireland due to major housing shortages.

Voxpro chief executive Dan Kiely said small businesses looking to expand and global companies hoping to set up bases here are being limited by a lack of accommodation for staff.

“We want to do the best for Cork and deliver as many jobs as we can in the next three years, but the housing situation will affect the numbers we employ,” said Mr Kiely.

“If we don’t tackle this, then businesses like Voxpro will be looking to places outside of Dublin and Cork.

“As a Cork native it’s very heartbreaking to say it.”

Last October, Paypal, with offices in Dublin and Dundalk, urged workers to rent spare rooms to new employees to help with a rental accommodation shortage.

The IDA acknowledged a “tightness of supply”, while Ibec said a shortage of office space had been an issue in recent years but companies are now encountering difficulty on the residential side.

“Businesses are now finding that they can find spaces for workers to work in but they can’t find space for the workers to live in,” said Peter Stafford, director of Property Industry Ireland, which is a business association within Ibec.

“It’s an issue in the cities, especially in Dublin where a lot of tech companies are clustering around the Docklands.”

Mr Stafford said many multinationals now find employees are reluctant to relocate to Ireland and are asking for salary increases to offset the higher cost of rental accommodation.

“There are companies who are paying staff a premium to move to Dublin because their cost of living is going to be so much higher here because rent is high,” he said.

Barrie O’Connell, president of Cork Chamber, said there is a “lack of coherence” when it comes to housing policy, with 12 government agencies having some involvement.

“Establishing a minister for housing and infrastructure would ensure improved oversight and a more connected approach at central level, which is required to address the rental and buyer crisis that currently presents a potential risk to our future economic development capacity,” he said.

This was echoed by Mr Kiely who said a “taskforce with teeth” made up of business leaders, Nama, and developers is also required “to come up with achievable solutions to solve the problem in the immediate term”.

Mr Kiely, who lives in Douglas, Cork, said there are around 30 homes in his area which are unoccupied but have not been put on the market and developments like these should be made available to workers.

“If we can’t accommodate young Irish graduates and EU graduates moving into Cork, then we will have to look elsewhere,” he said.

An IDA spokesperson said that although companies are continuing to invest in Ireland, there is “a tightness of supply in some city locations at present”.

“Any tightness of supply is very much a reflection of the success Dublin has had and much of the discussion around this issue concerns supply in one particular part of the city,” they said.