13 February 2023
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
Rents are rising four times faster on the open market than they are for sitting tenants and this shows the need for the extension of rent controls according to Socialist Party TD Mick Barry.
His comments come in the wake of the latest daft.ie report which shows rents to have increased by 75% on the open market since the introduction of rent controls but by 19% for sitting tenants covered by the legislation.
With Cork city rents rocketing to an average €1768 per month and outstripping the national average of €1733, the Cork North Central deputy says it now costs well over €20,000 a year (€21,216) to rent in the city.
With the report showing a mere 1096 properties available for renting on February 1, Deputy Barry said that local authorities need to now purchase every home put up for sale by landlords exiting the market.
He said that this would prevent tenants being evicted into homelessness and act to slow the rate of rent increases in society.
Mick Barry TD
Deputy Barry also highlighted the report’s findings that the median average age of young people leaving the family home had increased by nearly 50% in the space of a decade and said that Fine Gael’s 12 years in office had resulted in a generation of young people being locked out of the housing market.
He concluded: “It’s incredible that it now costs well over €20,000 to rent for a year in Cork city. Landlords are using the open goal the Government gave them – the open market loophole – to just bypass the Government’s rent controls. And it’s clear that young people are the big losers – unable to buy, unable to rent, forced to stay at home with parents for longer and longer. I suppose this report doesn’t tell us too much that we didn’t know already but the Government’s failures on housing just grow more and more stark.”
