Eamon Ryan has not ruled the return of tax breaks for property developers.
The Green party chief said he would consider all options on the table if it helped resolve the drastic housing crisis the country is enduring.
He said: “I won’t rule out further measures.”
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The return of the controversial policy would see developers essentially paid by the Government through breaks on tax owed.
Greedy developers were part of the reason the economy crashed around the year 2010 when some unscrupulous builders rushed through shoddy developments to avail of the generous tax forfeits on offer from the Fianna Fáil-led government.
Fine Gael leader, Tánaiste and soon-to-be Taoiseach again, Leo Varadkar, floated the idea that the policy could be reintroduced last week.
Mr Ryan was asked at the party’s annual conference if he could rule out any such policies, but he could not.
He replied: “Everyone acknowledges we have a real crisis in our housing, we do have to deliver for our young people a whole tranche of new housing solutions, that’s what we were debating here last night.
“There’s a whole range of measures we are already looking at and additional ones we will go to.
“Even that front page news in a paper today looking at that €100million support for local government to give them the ability to try and access and free up land.
“The ability for us in areas where the market is now broken, even that build to rent model where projects that have planning permission that are ready to go but can’t be built because the economics changed with the interest rate change - we’ve given a clear signal that we’ll be willing to step in and invest in new housing solutions, working in the market and with the market.
“And also then looking at a whole range of new vacant taxes, vacant property taxes, zoned land property taxes and charges to provide a stick to make sure that what’s gone on in this country for so long, that land is left fallow, it is held in store until being profitable to provide houses, we are introducing measures that will change that.
“I wouldn’t rule out further measures.
“We will do everything to make sure we start getting supply, particularly in difficult times like this, when as I said high interest rates, high costs of construction due to global supply chain issues are making it very hard.
“So we’re not stopped, we’re not satisfied in any way ruling anything further out.”
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