Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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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...
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Chapter 2: What recent changes in rent control are affecting Ireland's housing market?
We have been very critical that this government has chased this really expensive, build to rent, institutional investor type private investment, which is charging these huge rents. And that is not a sustainable model of delivery of housing. Back to, I want to finish the point I was making, Clare, about the rents. If the average rent, right, of Dublin, 2,600, that equates to 31,200 a year.
That is a, when we talked earlier, or it was spoken earlier in terms of, you know, rents and how hard it is, you're talking about taking up to 80, 90% of a nurse's salary
that's their entire take-home pay to try and cover that rent these rents are not sustainable and there was a change the government made which was to remove the inter-tenancy rent cap and not to get over complicated about this but it's essentially when the tenant leaves that in it before there was a two percent rent cap in place one of the key measures that the government made in their rental laws was removing that and known alliance sets that out that that is behind
this rent increase we argued why did the government have to do that why did it have to rents are so high already that investors are investing people are building that's very clear but what this government did was essentially in response to the lobbying by the institutional investor said we're going to allow it go even higher higher because they're telling us they want even higher rents
And this is not a sustainable type of housing. 3,400 is what the rent has been charged in apartments in Poolbeg. It feels to me like we're back in the Celtic Tiger period. These are unsustainable rents, unsustainable house prices. The alternative is clear. The state builds affordable housing and it uses other mechanisms to leverage private finance that will deliver affordable rentals.
And Niall, you would probably say that the supply is coming on, right? But in the meantime, we have this situation where people are being asked to pay, as Rory has outlined there, a massive percentage of their monthly income on their rent. Do you accept that these rules have made the situation worse?
Well, what's not sustainable is uncertainty in the whole rental sector. And when you have uncertainty, nobody is going to invest and people will exit the sector, landlords will exit the sector. And when you have landlords exiting the sector, obviously you have less supply and that drives, obviously, the rent numbers up.
The question is simple. Do you accept now that these rule changes have made things worse for tenants?
Well, what I accept is that we've had a major fundamental change in policy. We've had to do it because the model was broken. Rents were spiralling out of control prior to this in any event.
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Chapter 3: How are the new rent controls impacting eviction rates?
Well, what we're seeing now is that the supply is being ramped up. The pipeline is delivering. We had 36 in excess of 36,000 new housing units delivered last year. That was an increase of 20% on the previous year. We've seen the commencement notices for quarter one of 2026 were up 184%. So that is very, very positive. And that's how we fix this.
We fix it by ensuring that... That doesn't fix it for the people who are texting us, people who... This person is being evicted at the end of August, this listener, and can't go on the housing list and just doesn't know what to do and where to go. That doesn't help that person saying to them that the pipeline now is working.
Well, it's important that, as I said previously, that we create the environment where the private sector will step in, will build more apartments, will build more private housing. and enhance the supply that's available.
And equally, the state is playing its part in terms of social, affordable, cost rental, all the different mix of housing policy options that are available to people who need interventions. And that's also allied with a mix of other supports that are available there in relation to home dereliction and home vacancy grants to allow people to regenerate older properties.
So it's not about having one fix, but certainly getting the supply up there. And as I said to you at the outset, we don't in government have the luxury of being able to speak to one side of the debate. And Rory, He just won't tell you where he's going to get the extra 11 billion euros that we need to close the gap.
Well, he did talk about that, about leveraging money in bank accounts.
Well, he's saying, yeah, he's saying he's in favour of it, but he's not saying how he's doing it. You see, you have to give certainty for people to invest. Can I just finish this point, please?
But he did say, in fairness to him, he did say where he would get the money from and he spoke about leveraging money in bank accounts and there's a lot of money there to be used.
Can I just address that point? Saying that you would get it from people's bank accounts, he hasn't demonstrated or confirmed how he would give people, how his policy would give those people who are obviously using their private, he's trying to leverage their private funding, how he would give them certainty in the marketplace. And if you don't have certainty, people won't put their money
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