Minister can’t spin away soaring rent
Minister can’t spin away soaring rent - The Labour Party
- Latest Daft report shows average two bed apartment now an alarming €2,086 per month
- Minister on a hiding to nothing if he believes the rent hike bill will fix market
Labour housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan TD has slammed Government following publication of the latest Daft.ie Rent Report, which shows open market rents rose by 4.4 percent during 2025 and now stand 34 percent above pre Covid levels. The report also finds that the average monthly rent for a two bedroom apartment nationwide in the third quarter of 2025 reached €2086. Deputy Sheehan said the figures confirm that renters remain trapped in an unaffordable market and warned that the Minister’s current approach will not deliver the secure and affordable homes people need. He called on Government to set clear cost rental targets and to back a major expansion of State led home building.
Deputy Sheehan said:
“Instead of freezing rents and bringing them down. Minister Browne’s rent hike will cause rents to go up by at least 10% because of the market reset mechanism. While today’s Daft report is desperate it will pale into insignificance on what is to come.
“These figures lay bare the scale of the rental crisis facing workers, students and families across the country. Rents rising by 4.4 percent in a single year means yet another hit to people who already hand over a huge share of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. When rents now sit 34% above pre Covid levels and a two bedroom apartment costs on average €2086 a month, it is clear that this market is broken.
“Ministers are on a hiding to nothing if they believe their latest rent hike bill will fix this. Tweaks to the rules and gestures towards the market will not bring down rents. At best, the changes may yield some high end build to rent supply in parts of Dublin and Cork. They will deliver nothing in the vast majority of our cities and towns where renters struggle every day to find somewhere affordable to live.
“The truth is that Government is set to miss its affordable and social housing completion targets for the fifth year in a row. Every missed target widens the housing deficit that the Minister still refuses to properly acknowledge. While Government talks about delivery, the gap between what is promised and what is built grows larger. Renters pay the price for that failure.
“If the Minister is serious about changing direction, he must set a clear and ambitious target for cost rental delivery over the lifetime of Building Homes, Delivering Communities. Cost rental offers a genuine alternative because rents reflect the real cost of construction and management, not what the market can squeeze from people.
“Labour would take a very different approach. We would transform the Land Development Agency into a State construction company with the power to plan, build and deliver homes at scale. We would expand State backed cost rental so that thousands more renters can access secure homes at below market rents. We would develop new financing models for small and medium sized builders through State backed equity partnerships to unlock sites that currently lie idle. We would also establish a State backed investment scheme to fund apartment construction, ringfenced for social and affordable housing, so that public investment serves the public good.
“Renters cannot wait another year while rents climb higher and targets are quietly missed. Government must stop relying on the market to solve a crisis it has failed to manage and instead step in, build at scale and deliver affordable homes that people can actually afford.”