The following article by Eoin Ó Murchú was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
HOUSING – and the endless failure of the government to deal with the crisis – has once again dominated the headlines, with the latest report showing, as predicted by the Left, that evictions have soared since new rental rules came into force. The number of eviction notices issued by landlords rose by 50% in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2025.
The new data, from the state’s rent regulatory body, show that there were 7,062 notices of terminations in the first quarter of 2026, compared to 4,693 in 2025. The Residential Tenancies Board figures also show that the number of private landlords rose by 1.3% annually to over 105,000, indicating, the RTB says, increased participation in the rental market, and contradicting government claims that private landlords were being forced out of the market and the new rules were necessary to offset this.
On top of this, an Allied Irish Banks’ survey showed that housing construction slowed sharply last month. Further, figures for homelessness, for people dependent on emergency housing provision, have hit new records, as they do month after month, with child homelessness up 19% since last year. Nevertheless, Taoiseach Martin blandly declares that Fianna Fáil “made a difference” when it took charge of housing. Perhaps indeed it did make a difference, but for the worse not the better.
The central point that needs to be emphasised over and over again is that leaving housing to the market condemns thousands to eternal dependence on private landlords, on rising prices and of being squeezed over and over again as the profits roll in for the investors, the vulture funds and the speculators. The proof is in the pudding. In previous decades when the state confronted housing crises, these were resolved by direct state intervention – the building of thousands of socially available municipal homes. But such a programme – which, ironically, Fianna Fáil itself initiated in the 1940s and subsequent years – has been explicitly ruled out in favour of the market and private enterprise. Of course, private enterprise doesn’t build houses for philanthropic reasons. It does so for profit. Profit returns in the property market average 10% or so, and this is added to the price of a housing unit in addition to the actual cost of construction and the cost of serviced land.
By contrast state-built socially required housing is not intended to make a profit, but to cover the actual costs of construction. So, state-built cost rentals and cost purchase houses are, from the start, cheaper than the profit driven inflation of housing we experience in the market. At the end of the day, the market is not some magic objective formula that determines real value and real price, but the estimate made by private investors as to where and how they can get the biggest profit. This is the system that pertains in all capitalist societies, and it is the system which is paid for by those driven into homelessness and those priced out of the housing and, in too many cases, the rental markets. So, we see thousands of young people, often with good qualifications and good jobs, still living with their parents because they just don’t have the resources to pay the profits demanded by the speculators. Adding to their woes is the way the government is allowing the size of units to be reduced, giving people dog boxes rather than homes.
Let’s remind them: we need quality as well as quantity. And for those driven into the private rental sector, there is the acute spectre of what will happen to them when they reach retirement age. Social renting in Ireland is based on the differential rent scheme, which takes ability to pay into account. But the private market, along with freedom to evict, makes no such adjustment.
The private market charges the market rent, no matter what the individual’s income is. So, someone who can just about afford the rent when they are working and getting a wage are left in dire straits when they retire and their income is usually halved. We notice already an increase in the number of pensioners driven into homelessness, and as the government policies begin to bite this will get worse in the years to come.
We cannot allow this to continue. We must break the government that imposes such policies.