Business groups have hit out at the effects that the housing crisis is having on their operations, with one claiming it is constraining economic growth.
In a written opening statement to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment ahead of its appearance today, Chambers Ireland, which represents tens of thousands of firms, said the greatest challenge facing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is the lack of available talent, driven by affordable and appropriate housing being unavailable across most of the country.
"With a small number of exceptions, all our chambers have housing as the main cause of their businesses' challenges," said Ian Talbot, chief executive of the organisation.
There are regional differences occurring, he added, with buyers in some areas competing with State-backed institutions, such as local authorities.
Mr Talbot said this is leading to situations where employers facing an enormous scarcity of talent cannot find anyone else in the area with the same skills and cannot afford to pay more to workers who need to earn more in order to be able to find a home.
"Those staff leave, they move to a different area, or they get a remote or hybrid job which pays them extra and allows them to stay close to their roots and their community," he said.
"It’s very hard to compete with that."
He said Chambers Ireland members are having to take on new unskilled people, train them up and then pay them more so they can cover their rent, at which point they start looking to buy a house and then move elsewhere because they cannot get anything suitable.
"This is having a tremendous effect on the productivity of the Irish labour market," he claimed.
"In the cities it’s an even greater challenge, the competition for talent is even higher, employees are able to find work in large multinationals across a wide variety of industries and sectors."
The situation means it is becoming ever harder for smaller and medium sized firms to compete, Mr Talbot said.
"Already, across the country large employers are buying up individual homes and houses so that they can ensure their employees have somewhere to stay," he added.
"Several times in the last year we were contacted by businesses hoping to make big investments, potentially supporting hundreds of jobs, that were considering buying out entire housing estates, if that would allow them to grow their workforce."
He added that Irish units of multinationals are often not competitive for further internal investments because they cannot meet their existing employment targets never mind expand their workforce.
"We are growing as an economy, but we are not growing at the pace we could grow. Our domestic market has been constrained by this lack of housing," he said.
