McDonald said the average cost of new rents in Dublin is “off the wall”.
Mary Lou McDonald has described Ireland’s rent crisis as a “social catastrophe” and slammed the Government’s Housing for All strategy as being “not fit for purpose”.
The Sinn Féin leader made the comments in the Dáil during Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday (27 April), following the release of a new report showing a significant increase in the cost of rent in new tenancies over the past year.
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) published its latest quarterly Rent Index report earlier in the day, which is based on actual rents paid on 9,346 private tenancies newly registered with the RTB during the fourth quarter of 2021.
According to the RTB, on a yearly basis, the cost of renting in new tenancies grew by 9% nationwide, a further increase from the previous report.
It also found that the cost of renting in new tenancies in Dublin was nearly double that of renting outside of the county, with rent in Dublin costing €1,972 per month on average, compared to €1,104 per month outside Dublin.
Highlighting the report in the Dáil to Taoiseach Micheál Martin, McDonald said it made for “fairly devastating reading” and showed that the Government’s housing policy is “failing dismally”.
“Rents have doubled since 2011… The average new rent in the capital in Dublin now stands at nearly €2,000,” she stated.
“That is off the wall… This is a social catastrophe.”
She told the Taoiseach that the rent crisis is hammering a generation and “robbing them of their aspirations for tomorrow”.
“It’s deeply, deeply unfair. In fact, it is a horrible situation for anyone,” McDonald added.
“Of course, Taoiseach, this is not simply an urban crisis. Rural Ireland fares no better.
“Counties like Donegal, Longford, Roscommon and Leitrim have all experienced massive jumps and in fact, now in many many towns and villages, there are no homes available to rent at all.
“Where are people supposed to live Taoiseach? How can they hope to put a roof over their heads, build a decent life or raise a family if that’s what they wish to do?
“How are ordinary people – families, workers – expected to pay these rip-off rents and somehow still find money to pay soaring energy bills, big childcare fees and, of course, to put food on the table?”
She stated that the number of properties available to rent continues to fall across Ireland and that this is pushing up the cost of renting while forcing many families into homelessness.
“You and Minister Darragh O’Brien have failed spectacularly to get a grip on this crisis and the fact is that your housing plan is not fit for purpose,” McDonald told the Taoiseach.
She called on him to cut rents by putting €1,500 back into renters’ pockets through a tax rebate and to ban rent increases for three years.
In response, Martin said McDonald was incorrect in saying that the Housing For All strategy, which launched last September, is not working.
“There has been a rebound in construction activities since we’ve emerged from Covid,” he told the Dáil.
“We’re now witnessing 35,000 homes commenced in the year to March 2022… That is a significant figure.
“But we need more supply and Housing For All is a substantive suite of policies that are designed to increase supply.”
The Taoiseach also said that, according to the ESRI, if it was not for the limits the Government has introduced regarding rent pressure zones already, rents would be “far higher in existing tenancies”.
This was before he admitted that the increasing rents for new tenancies are “very worrying” and “not satisfactory”, stating that this is related to the issue of supply.
He added that there is “an onus on everybody to facilitate the supply of housing” and then accused Sinn Féin of opposing a “whole series of developments”.
In regards to the tax credit McDonald called for, the Taoiseach later said:
“The RTB – the index measures… it’s designed to measure developments in rental prices faced by those taking up new tenancies.
“A tax credit would only add to the price of those rents… It just would be inflationary.
“There’s no guarantee at all that it would result in a reduction of increasing rents for new tenancies.”
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