Never been more stressful to be a renter, Eoin Ó Broin says as rents rise 7 per cent

It has never been more expensive or more stressful to be a renter than under the current Government, Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin has said.

Mr Ó Broin told the Dáil on Thursday that for “three long years rents have risen to levels never thought possible”.

Speaking during Leaders’ Questions, the Dublin Mid-West TD said the latest Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) report showed that rents rose last year by almost seven per cent.

Mr Ó Broin said since the Government had taken office, rents had increased by a “staggering” 23 per cent, while the average rent in Dublin was €25,000 per year.

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“How on earth do you expect the majority of working people to pay that,” he asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue, who was standing in for questions.

The Sinn Féin TD said what was happening in the private rental sector was “an absolute disaster” and “rents on your watch are not only now unaffordable, they are totally out of control”.

Mr Ó Broin said renters “desperately need a break” and called for an emergency ban on rent increases for three years.

“They need a full month’s rent back in their pockets,” he added. “They need real security of tenure and of course, they need Government to massively increase the supply of genuinely affordable homes to rent or buy.”

In response, Mr McConalogue said it was not possible to solve the housing problem “in a week or a month or overnight because the key issue is supply”.

He said the Government was doing “everything and anything” they possibly could to build and drive momentum to ensure new supply.

The minister said the Government had taken a number of measures to support tenants including capping rent increases in rental pressure zones of no more than 2 per cent annually and extending rental pressure zones to 2024 as well as tax credits for renters.

Mr McConalogue added that Mr Ó Broin didn’t have “any magic solutions” and that the solution was more supply.