Rental measures introduced by government on March 1st have led to record levels of eviction notices not seen since the famine, according to Social Democrats housing spokesperson Rory Hearne.<\/p>\n
Deputy Hearne said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the months leading up to the government\u2019s rental changes, which allow landlords to reset rents to market rate between tenancies, I repeatedly raised the drastic rise in eviction notices with the Minister for Housing, and how March 1st\u2019s laws had accelerated this trend.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s report from the Residential Tenancies Board that eviction notices have jumped by 41% comes as no surprise – landlords are kicking out tenants as they\u2019ve been incentivised by government policy to do so in order to hike up rents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of eviction notices also rose on an annual basis from over 16,000 in 2024 to more than 20,000 last year. We are trending towards a disaster of unimaginable proportions while this government lies asleep at the wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese evictions are built-in to government decisions – the issuing of eviction notices to 36 separate households in Wexford by just one landlord at the beginning of the month laid bare the effects of Fine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s disastrous legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sheer extent of human misery the government is willing to accept to placate vulture funds and investor landlords is deplorable. Evictions from the private rental sector are the greatest cause of homelessness and cause immense trauma.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter raising this issue with T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris today, he failed to commit to emergency action, such as introducing a ban on evictions. He displayed no interest in changing his government\u2019s approach to housing, despite its failure to reach its targets year after year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister for Housing should implement what the Social Democrats have been calling for: a no-fault eviction ban for all existing tenancies \u2013 not just limited to new tenancies, as is the case with the new rental laws that came into effect on March 1st.<\/p>\n
\u201cHomeless numbers reached more than 17,000 last month for the first time in Irish history, which is a direct result of government housing policy. It\u2019s beyond time for a change in approach to housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
March 19th, 2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rental measures introduced by government on March 1st have led to record levels of eviction notices not seen since the famine, according to Social Democrats housing spokesperson Rory Hearne. Deputy Hearne said: \u201cIn the months leading up to the government\u2019s rental changes, which allow landlords to reset rents to market rate between tenancies, I repeatedly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[785,663,10,7,510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evictions","category-homelessness","category-housing-crisis","category-press-release","category-rory-hearne"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n