18 August 2015
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
Anti Austerity Alliance councillor Mick Barry this morning said that there is a clear conflict of interest between the State’s 41 TDs who are landlords and legislative action that is necessary to tackle the growing rents/accommodation crisis.
His comments came as Daft.ie released information which shows that rents in Cork city are the fastest rising in the State with a 10.4% year-on-year increase over last year. This compares with equivalent statistics of 10.1% for Galway, 8.9% for Limerick and 8.5% for Dublin.
Cllr Barry said that freezing rents and launching a major investment programme in social housing were just two basic measures which could be introduced to tackle the rents/accommodation crisis but which would conflict with the interests of the 25% of TDs who are themselves landlords.
An article written by Dr Rory Hearne for the Irish Examiner in October 2014 gave a glimpse of the level of landlord representation in Dail Eireann. The article reported that Alan Shatter TD owned 14 rental properties, Tom Barry TD and Frank Feighan TD owned 10 each and John McGuinness TD owned 8.
Cllr Barry said this morning:
“The rent and accommodation crisis is growing week by week yet there is no effective action being taken from Dail Eireann. There are several reasons for this but it’s fair to ask whether one of them might be the fact that 25% of TDs are themselves landlords and that there is a conflict of interest between them and the type of strong legislation needed to control rents.”
