Ireland’s housing crisis is escalating. Rents rose 4.4 per cent in the first quarter alone, the same amount as the whole of last year. Rents are now 7.8 per cent higher than a year ago, 40 per cent above pre-Covid levels and a staggering 81 per cent higher than a decade ago. The latest Daft report, relating to new tenancies, shows the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment stands at €2,176. Supply is critically low. On May 1st, across the entire country with a population heading towards 5.5 million, there were only 2,374 homes available to rent nationwide, down 4 per cent year-on-year and the third-lowest May figure since 2006.

This year, despite the rising population, total listings are running at roughly half the 2015–2019 average when the population was 4.7 million. Today there are 700,000 more people living here than in 2016. There are simply too many people looking for not enough houses. The obvious long-term solution is to boost housebuilding (supply) and temper immigration (demand) until the system can cope with all the people looking for non-existent homes.

Rather than focus on rent as the problem, rents should be seen as a sort of warning system, like coolant in a car engine. When the coolant light goes on, the engine is overheating. Similarly, rents are telling you that the system is overheating and the solution is not to try to adjust the rents - with subsidies to renters such as the Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) - but to fix the system. Unfortunately, the State is obsessed with the warning signs - rents or prices - because this is what people experience day to day and is politically immediate. A properly functioning administration would logically focus on balancing demand for homes to supply and make serious decisions on planning and immigration accordingly. There is no sign of such thinking.

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