Rents have again risen to a shocking level – and Fine Gael is trotting out their familiar line about ‘we need greater supply’.
Fine Gael has been in government office since 2011. So if there is a ‘problem of supply’ it is because they have deliberately held back on building social housing.
The truth is that Fine Gael– and their partners in Fianna Fail – adhere to a neoliberal ideology that accommodation must be left to the private housing market. One in three of their TDs are landlords who have a direct conflict of interest when it comes to legislation.
This is why they have refused to bring in proper rent controls. Instead, they pretend that there are rent caps in certain rent pressure zones.
But last year rents across the country rose by 11.3 percent. That is nearly three times higher than Fine Gael’s legal rent cap of 4%.
The reason for the discrepancy is that Fine Gael deliberately wrote in enough loopholes into their legislation to ensure that landlords could still increase rent. So a landlord can get a higher rent if they claim they are doing substantial improvements or if a relative is coming to live in the accommodation.
All of this means that average rent for a one-bedroom apartment ranges from €1,215 in north county Dublin to a high of €1,981 in Dublin 4.
We need to be rid of the landlord parties.
