Dublin has the highest rent for 1, 2 and 3 bedroom flats of any city in the EU. If you are renting a whole house, then you will be paying the second highest rent, just behind Luxembourg.
This scandal is the direct result of policies promoted by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
They opposed proper rent controls because many of their TDs are landlords. They talked about ‘rent pressure zones’ but deliberately left many loopholes for their landlord friends.
They invited in vulture funds and gave them tax breaks to fatten up their profits.
Today one on five tenants are living in a property owned by a landlord who has more than 100 tenancies.
These are mainly vulture funds that were invited into Ireland by the former Fine Gael Finance Minister, Michael Noonan. His purpose was to reflate the housing market after it crashed in 2008.
The social base of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is built on people who have speculated on property. They felt it was far more important to restore the upward cycle of property prices than to protect tenants.
This is why they introduced a special scheme for Real Estate Investment Trusts to enjoy special tax advantages.
In the last budget, even more tax concessions were made to private landlords. Fianna Fáil spokespeople repeated a lie that they were leaving the market and so tenants would be in greater danger if landlords did not get more sweeteners.
Yet figures from the Rental Tenancy Board show this was completely false. Far from landlords leaving the market, their numbers have increased.
And why wouldn’t they when Dublin has the highest rents in the EU.