Rents in Ireland surged by highest level on record
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We begin with this new information from the DAF.ie report which tells us that rents saw the largest quarterly increase on record, surging by 4.4% between December and March as the government's new rent control system came into effect. Now Sinn Féin is calling for emergency bans on both rent increases and no-fault evictions and a motion will be voted on tonight in the Dáil. So are these new rent controls just doing more harm? Then good. Well, I'm joined by Rory Hearn, who's Social Democrat's housing spokesperson and TD for Dublin North West, and Niall Collins, Fianna Fáil TD and Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. Rory, there was a heated debate on this in the Dáil.
You said that the current government is the cruelest and most callous since the foundation of the state. Why?
Well, Clare, I said that before we even knew about these rents. And I said it because we have reached the highest level of evictions in this country since the famine. 7,000 households were evicted from the private rental sector in the first quarter of this year. We've record rents, record homelessness. In my own constituency, from Ballymun to Artane, people are just... they're at the end of their tether in terms of you've got multiple households living in houses, overcrowding, We're knocking on doors in the last while for the by-elections, literally people in tears breaking down, saying their children were leaving because they just saw no future in this country. People in tears breaking down. I had one woman yesterday breaking down, crying because she's got cancer, she's in her 60s, she's being evicted.
And she said, how can I go into emergency accommodation with a colostomy bag? And this is the human reality of what is happening out there And this was, as I said last night, I was just so frustrated. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have refused to listen to the opposition, to the people about what is going on in terms of this housing disaster. And when we look at it, the rent measures that have shown now today, the DAFT report has shown very, very clearly they have made a disaster into a catastrophe. And the author of the report, Rona Lyons, makes it very clear that these new rental measures have led to these rent rises, the highest increase in rents in 25 years. Rents now, and just to give your listeners some context,
Rents in Dublin now, 2,600 a month is the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
It's an extraordinary figure. I want to bring in Niall Collins at this point because the accusations are strong, Niall, that your government has turned this housing crisis from a disaster into a catastrophe. What do you say?
I suppose, give it context. We've had a major shift in public policy in relation to the whole rental sector.
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