Measures justified for a short period only

AS A response to the housing crisis the proposal, apparently to be brought to cabinet next week, to limit landlords to increasing rents only every two years is piecemeal and hardly represents a permanent solution. 

Nevertheless, it is a good, welcome first step and offers some short-term security to tenants at least. It offers clarity to landlords as well.

The prospect of Environment Minister Alan Kelly over- riding local authority standards as part of an effort to speed up the delivery of homes must be seen in the same light. Our history with substandard buildings also suggests this option should have a limited shelf life and not be used as a Trojan horse to reduce standards beyond this emergency period.

Suggestions that the loosening of the planning standards would allow the construction of smaller apartments, reduce the number of elevator shafts required and reduce the number of car parking spaces needed, particularly in developments close to public transport links, all sounds pretty reasonable but, and there is always a but when talking about development in Ireland, this relaxation must not become a charter for short cuts and below-par developments.

There are very few interfaces between the property rights we so revere and the need to have a home as volatile as the one between tenant and landlord. It would be considerable progress if when this process ends that relationship was a stable, trusting, and reliable one.