The new Residential Tenancies Bill will ensure that starting from March 2026 rents will be reset to much higher market rents and provide a structure for landlords to increase them further. Speaking on the new legislation in the Dáil, Richard Boyd Barrett and Paul Murphy said:
Richard Boyd Barrett - “The pretence that the Government cares about the rental crisis and the unaffordable and obscene rents that are contributing to the housing crisis and misery that many people are suffering in this country is being dropped completely.
“In the Minister's speech he admits this. The purpose of the resetting upwards of already unaffordable rents to market rents is ‘to encourage investment in the rental sector by ensuring that rents in respect of long standing tenancies do not fall behind market rent’.
“For the very few people out there who might have half-affordable rent, the Government is to make sure they cannot even have that. We have to make sure, in the interests of the investors, that everybody is paying the highest possible rent because that is what the investors need.
“The Government will put up what are already the most unaffordable rents in Europe to even more unaffordable levels. Our rents are 30% higher than the EU average and the Government wants them to go higher.
“In Dublin, the average rent is now 50% of the after tax income of the average worker. When everything is reset to the highest level of market rent, that average will jump.
“Rents have gone up by 41% in the past six years. If rent is reset every six years to market levels, then rents in 60,000 to 70,000 new tenancies will potentially go up by 40% every year.
“There will also be new reasons for eviction, because every time tenants change rents can be reset to market levels.
“Even in the case of those who are marginally protected, the landlord now has an incentive to kick them out and get the rent up to the highest level.
“What the Government is doing is unbelievable. It is disgusting and shameful and will make the housing misery a lot worse for a lot of people.”
Paul Murphy - “The basic point which cannot be driven home hard enough is that this is a Bill for rip-off rents. That is the purpose of it. It is a landlord's charter written by a landlord's Government.
“It means that within the next few years, virtually all renters will be paying at least an extra €3,000 a year or an extra €250 a month.
“You would think the Government has no idea that we are in the middle of a dire cost-of-living emergency. People cannot afford to pay their rent, heat their homes, put food on the table or buy things for their kids. They already cannot afford to live.
“This Bill is supposed to reassure existing tenants that their rents will not shoot up yet, unless they move voluntarily or involuntarily. Of course, that happens in any case - on average, every three and a half years for most tenants, and every year for students in private rented accommodation. They are even more shafted by this Bill than everyone else.
“Another group getting doubly shafted are the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) tenants and the homeless HAP tenants.
“Councils across the country have already hiked the rents that they are paying. On top of that, now they are going to be increasing the top-up they have to pay to their landlords. It is a shameful attack on the poorest households in the country”.