The Minister for the Environment has said he is confident that new proposals on rent will comprehensively deal with issues people are experiencing in the housing market.
Speaking in Kinvara, Co Galway, Alan Kelly said the measures had been worked on by the Government for several weeks and would be considered at next week's Cabinet meeting.
Mr Kelly said difficulties with rent and supply of housing would be dealt with.
Mr Kelly refused to be drawn on the exact content of the proposals but said they were aimed at helping vulnerable families deal with the problem of escalating rents, particularly in urban areas.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, speaking in Limerick, confirmed to RTÉ that a package of measures has been agreed and signed off on between himself and Mr Kelly, and will go to Cabinet on Tuesday.
Mr Kelly said the plan would bring "some form of certainty to people who are renting".
He refused to comment on reports that rent would not be linked to the Consumer Price Index and denied suggestions that the issue had been divisive at Cabinet level.
However, sources close to Mr Kelly are claiming that the deal agreed last night amounts to a two-year rent freeze and will give greater stability to the market than his original plan which involved linking rents to the CPI.
They claimed that the proposals are "100%" better than any previous plan and describe the measures for the construction sector as a "game changer".
The proposals agreed with Mr Noonan will reportedly only allow landlords to increase rent every two years and would mean that a tenant facing a rent increase next January would have it put off for 12 months.
As part of the deal some development levies for smaller houses would be scrapped to encourage housebuilding and landlords would be allowed claim 100% tax relief on mortgage interest on a property rented to someone in receipt of rent supplement or other benefits.
The proposed changes, which have already been criticised by the Irish Property Owners' Association, will be fast-tracked through the Oireachtas when they are included in a bill that is currently before the Seanad.
The package ends a month-long standoff between Mr Kelly and Mr Noonan over plans to deal with the crisis in the private rental sector, which has seen rising rents make hundreds of families homeless.
Mr Noonan said that although the process took longer than envisaged, having originally hoped to have it done for the Budget, they had a very satisfactory solution now and one which he fully supports.
Mr Kelly, meanwhile, said he had never exchanged a harsh word with Mr Noonan and said he had a very close working relationship with him.
He said the proposals being brought to Cabinet did not amount to a climbdown on his part. Instead, he said he felt the plan would be very positively received and would help deal with the issue.
He said people would see that a comprehensive set of measures were being introduced which would clarify the situation regarding rents and help increase supply.
Describing the issue of housing as the biggest challenge faced by his department, he said the construction sector had to be stimulated so that it could meet demand.
Just got an email from my landlord putting up the rent because of Alan Kelly's botched attempt to introduce rent controls. Fantastic.
— Colette Browne (@colettebrowne) November 6, 2015
He said five times more houses were needed in the capital than were being currently being built and that "way more" units were needed in other areas as well.
The minister said he was confident that all of his proposals would be legally robust to withstand any possible challenge from landlords.
He said everything he was proposing had been framed in consultation with the Attorney General.
Housing charity welcomes reported proposals
Housing and homeless charity the Peter McVerry Trust has welcomed the deal.
Peter McVerry Trust CEO Pat Doyle said that rents being fixed for two years is good news for tenants and he believed the measure will help rein in rent increases that have played a significant role in new cases of homelessness this year.
Focus Ireland Advocacy and Communications Manager Roughan Mac Namara, meanwhile, said: "The impact on rising homelessness is impossible to estimate at this point and we can only wait to see what difference it makes.
"However, we are highly concerned it will fail to stem the constant rising flow of 70 to 80 families becoming homeless in Dublin alone every month."
A senior researcher with the ESRI said the reported measures do not go far enough in terms of dealing with a lack of housing.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Kieran McQuinn said it could be another three years before the market responds to the measures that are being proposed to deal with the shortage in supply of homes.
He said the Government needs to look at other measures such as building more homes.
"If you go back and look at the official figures, the Department of Environment figures, you'll see that the State through local authority was providing on average of around 4,000 units per annum, between 2001 and 2008.
"However, that's dried up in terms of the way in which we now go about providing social housing. So I think there's very legitimate reasons to go back and look at that as a way of meeting the housing demand."
The Simon Community said the package does not go far enough.
The organisation's Head of Policy Niamh Randall said any move to stem the increase in rent was welcome but the Government measures outlined today did not amount to full rent certainty.
Ms Randall said it was regrettable that rents would not be index linked as this meant prices would continue to increase, with no mechanism to offset that.
Landlords say measures amount to rent control
The Residential Landlords Association of Ireland described the reported measures as a form of rent control.
Spokesperson Fintan McNamara said the measures, if agreed, could lead to landlords moving out of the rental market.
"The trouble with that is … it's two years now, it could be three years in the future.
"It is rent control effectively...30% of people who are currently renting out a property have said they are going to get out as soon as possible.
"I can see that actually increasing, because people are now going to have great fears.
"We brought in rent controls 70 years ago, it took 70 years to get rid of it, now it's back again. And I think this is wrong for Ireland. I think we should have taken a different tack entirely."
Mr McNamara described as a "bureaucratic nightmare", a proposal that would see landlords having to compare rent levels with three other properties in order to justify a rent increase.
He said it will be extremely difficult for landlords to provide rent comparisons on other properties in order to justify their increase.
