Rental Sector: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel

I welcome the Minister to the Seanad. I and my colleagues in Sinn Féin have brought this motion forward because we remain deeply concerned about the rental sector in Ireland and, of course, the Government’s policies which are worsening the housing crisis month by month. The updated homelessness figures will be out this Friday and no doubt the figures will, sadly, break new records. Every month more people are forced into homelessness. More young people end up back with their parents in their childhood bedroom and unfortunately, we see many of them, who just cannot continue to stay there due to the lack of dignity, independence and privacy, leave every single week whether it is to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and so on.
This Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government recently introduced new rental measures - a market reset – which is already showing to be disastrous for people, workers and families who already struggle to pay rent and are now receiving eviction notices. The Daft report published last week proved what we were saying all along, that the rent hike Bill would push up rents. Alongside the higher rent increases, we are also seeing a 51% increase in eviction notices across the country. This is no coincidence. This is a direct result of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policy. These figures are stark, but they are not just numbers. They are real people struggling with the real impacts of these policies. Last week’s Daft report showed that to rent a two-bedroom house in County Limerick has gone up by a staggering 32% since last year. The average rent on two-bedroom houses is now just over €1,700 a month.
Where does that leave families? One family I spoke to in Limerick last week, came into my office crying and sobbing with sheer depression. It broke my heart to sit there and listen to what they are going through. Jane - I am not going to use surnames - and her husband are just €1,000 over the limit on their wages to be able to apply for social housing. They have two young children and they have been given a termination notice on their rented home. So, where do they go? They do not have family they can turn to. They do not qualify for the housing assistance payment, HAP, or long-term emergency accommodation. If they are lucky enough to find another house to rent, and if Members go on daft.ie any day of the week, they will see that there are slim pickings out there, they are looking at a significant increase in their rent payment.
I am going to run through their situation. This family has an income of about just over €710 per week. Based on the average rent they will pay if they find another property, that is €400 a week leaving them with €310.
A weekly shop for a family of four - two adults and two kids - costs approximately €180. That leaves them €130 a week to pay for electricity, gas, bin charges and school fees and, considering they live in County Limerick with its lack of public services and public transport, they are guaranteed to have a car which brings with it tax and car insurance. God forbid something goes wrong with the car because they will not have the money. On €130 per week, they will find it very hard to budget for that. It is just an impossible situation for them and they are at their wits' end. I am hearing this consistently in my office. I have families coming in to me who are looking at eviction notices. They do not know how they are going to survive this.
The Government can put whatever spin it wants on housing policy and how successful it thinks it is but the facts are the lived experiences of the people, and they tell a completely different story. This Government is not listening. We told it the rent hike Bill would cause an increase in rents. The Government said it would not and told us we were being dramatic. What does the Minister say now that the facts and figures are laid bare for him?
This is from last week's report by daft.ie :
This sharp surge in rents coincides with the new rent control system. A key feature of the new rules is the ability to reset rents to market levels when a tenancy ends. For landlords whose rents had been constrained by earlier rules, this represents an opportunity to realign rents with prevailing market conditions. The scale of the increase in early 2026 suggests that this opportunity has been taken up widely, where tenancies have recently turned over.
This surge in rents comes at a time when the overall availability of rental housing remains very limited. As a result, the price effects of the new system have appeared more quickly and more clearly than any increase in supply.
These are not my words; they are from a daft.ie report. Will the Minister acknowledge the figures? Does he agree or disagree with the report? Does he acknowledge and agree or disagree with the Housing Commission's view that a radical reset of housing policy is needed?
The amendment to the motion is an insult to every single renter who is struggling to keep a roof over their head. It is an insult to the 17,500 people who are homeless and the thousands of young people who are fed up because they feel they will never move out of their family homes and instead are leaving the country. This Government does not listen and it is high time for it to admit the policies it is putting in place are not working.
Again, we call on the Government to introduce an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions; cut private rents by putting a full month's rent back into every private renter's pocket; oppose rent increases for council tenants, those in receipt of HAP and rental accommodation scheme, RAS, payments, and cost rental tenants; introduce a radical reset of housing policy, as set out by the Housing Commission; and increase and accelerate the delivery of social, affordable and private for-purchase homes.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27