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THE PROSPECT OF tenants being given rent certainty over the next three years is dwindling as the coalition moves closer to agreement on measures to tackle the housing and rental crisis.
Environment Minister Alan Kelly’s so-called ‘rent certainty’ proposal, which would link residential rental prices to the consumer price index for around three years, has met with strong opposition from Fine Gael.
Kelly met with Micheal Noonan today with the Finance Minister known to strongly oppose the rent certainty measure over fears that it would interfere too heavily in the rental market.
Speaking this evening, Tánaiste Joan Burton refused to say whether the proposal was off the table, saying only that talks between Noonan and Kelly today were “constructive and detailed”.
It comes as a new Claire Byrne Live/Amárach Research poll finds strong support for the idea with 50% of people supporting Kelly’s efforts to introduce rent certainty. Just over a quarter, 26%, are opposed to the idea while 24% said they don’t know.
TheJournal Politics / TwitterJoan Burton says progress made in talks over rent and housing, but doesn't say anything about rent certainty pic.twitter.com/l9XHnXdljH
— TheJournal Politics (@TJ_Politics) November 2, 2015
The government is set to finalise proposals in the coming days before an announcement next week. Measures will include requiring landlords to give 90 days notice of any rental increase, as opposed to the current 30 days.
There would also be restrictions on rent increases for people in long-term leases. The Private Residential Tenancies Board is also set to be given enhanced powers to deal with tenant/landlord disputes.
This evening, when pressed, Burton would not say if Kelly’s rent certainty proposal was now off the table. She said:
Minister Noonan and Minister Kelly met and had a very productive meeting at which I think great progress was made on a number of the issues.
A meeting of the cabinet sub-committee on housing also took place today with the two ministers, Burton and the Taoiseach Enda Kenny briefed by Dublin City Council officials on the homelessness crisis.
Burton said there would be structures in place to “to ensure that anybody who is sleeping rough over Christmas will have a roof over their head, where particularly they can be persuaded to seek such shelter and we’ve also allocated the funding to do that”.
Minister Kelly was present at that meeting so I think that great progress has been made and I would be confident that we would have substantial agreement on all the principal issues.
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I’d love to know where these 85 people were hiding, they have €700 frozen in an account belonging me, even after i sent in passport, etc. etc. and actually impossible to speak to a human. Good riddance to the whole company.
@Steve Davis: Imagining all employees works in customer support to fulfil the Karen wish like yours is bonker.
@Alex: is that a riddle ??
@Alex: They are laying off customer support that’s the problem.
@Alex: Bonker than what, I can’t help wondering.
I’d be annoyed too if I couldn’t get my €700.
@Steve Davis: it must be illicit earnings and suspicious no doubt.
@Steve Davis: If I was owed 700, I would arrive in their office and sit in reception until a manager sorted the issue out.
@Sean Money: No nothing as exciting like illicit funds unfortunately… when you hit a level of transactions they are legally obliged to ask you for further identification – which wasn’t a problem. Sent in everything they asked, and the system showed green ticks on everything – yet when i try to do a transaction, it says there was paperwork outstanding – yet everything was showing ‘completed’. All you get from emails and tickets is a robot response created by Ai. Sack the whole lot of them and close it down…. robbing ba*tards
@Steve Davis: They’ll probably use your €700 to pay redundancies.
@Mark R: I’ve done something similar in the past and it worked
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: not with PayPal, Anthony big multinational
Dont tax us and we’ll employ people. Maybe it time to start taxing the techies.
@bruce banner:
Haha hahaha hahahaha
@bruce banner: I don’t think it’s taxes as such.
You have the advancement of AI and online chats and cheaper workforce in India.
No Western country can compete with the salaries in Bangalore.
Outsourcing to India and surrounding countries is the big issue.
- and good luck talking to them on the phone.
Time for all staff to bail out of PayPal by the sounds of things. Writing on the wall.
Unfortunate for employees being let go but I think paypal is a business on the decline with likes of stripe, revolut ..etc Have not used it in a very long time and was a frequent user.
“. . .support packages to help them as they move to the next step in their careers,” added the spokesperson.
That’s certainly putting a positive spin on redundancy proposals!
The double edged sword of working from home – if you can do your job from Dublin then someone from Dehli can do your job for 1/10th of your salary
They’ve really, really torn the a*** out of this country at this stage, letting down so many people sacking them.
have your say