All tactics, no strategy
The Week in Housing 13/02/2026
I’m taking a break from the series on right populism today, but I’ll return for the final installment next week. Today I’m looking at the debate around the Residential Tenancies Bill. Also, an important new book has just been published which I’m sure will be of interest to many of you: Understanding Homelessness in Ireland Since Independence, by Eoin O’Sullivan, Mike Allen and Sarah Sheridan.
The new legislation to reform the rental sector has finally been published, and we are just weeks away from both the security of tenure and rent control measures coming into effect (for new tenancies).
I’ve already commented at length about the measures themselves, what I want to focus on today is the debate surrounding their introduction.
The first thing to note is that commentary has been almost universally negative. The opposition, academics and many others have focused on the fact that the partial deregulation will lead to increased rents across the sector. Industry and more right leaning commentators have focused on the security of tenure measures driving landlords out. A lot of the commentary tends to highlight one negative impact (higher rents, fewer landlords, too complicated) and conclude that the reforms are terrible on that basis.
On the one hand, it’s fair enough to highlight negative impacts of policies that are, after all, supposed to have a positive impact. The problem is when specific aspects/impacts of a given policy are taken in isolation. The debate tends to wind up, at least from my perspective, quite confused. You can see why people might find it hard to form a view of the new rent reforms when, according to various experts, the new measures will:
Make the PRS more affordable
Make the PRS much less affordable
Increase the supply of PRS properties
Destroy the supply of PRS properties
Increase security of tenure so tenants can have a home for life
Drive some many landlords out of the system no tenant will ever find a home again
Create policy certainty
Face constitutional challenge that could topple the whole thing
All of the above are partially true. But because they are isolated, and exaggerated, points focusing on a specific impact, they provide only a very partial understanding. Hence, in the round the debate feels like a series of contradictory points which it is impossible to make sense of. In short, there is a tendency to treat housing policy as a series of ‘single issue campaigns’, without ever joining the dots.
A broader vision?
A policy intervention which significantly reforms both rent setting and security of tenure, the two fundamental pillars of the PRS, can only be meaningfully evaluated in terms of what we might call its ‘system level’ objectives. The debate should focus on what kind of PRS the reforms intend to create and to what extent they are likely to get us closer to that. Any attempt at reform like this will involve trade offs. That is inevitable. The fact that affordability will deteriorate in the immediate aftermath of the partial deregulation of rents does not, in and of itself, amount to a robust critique. Similarly, any attempt to enhance security of tenure may impact the investment behaviour of some landlords, but that does not mean such an attempt is not justified or appropriate.
To ascertain whether or not increasing rents or the exit of some landlords is indeed appropriate, we have to look at how these issues relate to each other and how they fit into some kind of vision of the PRS.
Amidst all the ink spilled on these new rent measures, there has been very little attention paid to what kind of rental sector the Government is aiming to achieve and whether or not it represents a vision that we, as a society, can get behind. This lamentable state is not helped at all by the fact that the Government themselves have not been able to articulate what that vision might be and why it is desirable.
Sticking plasters and bangers
Instead, different aspects of the legislation are presented as ‘solutions’ or ‘fixes’ responding to isolated issues. Taken together, the Government assures us that the measures represent ‘an appropriate balance’. We’re left to guess at why this balance should be considered appropriate, or indeed desirable.
Looking back over recent years, rent controls are a good example of what I’m trying to get at here. Some years ago, rents were increasing very rapidly, so rent controls were introduced to respond to that problem. Then apartment supply fell in 2024, so rent controls have been deregulated to deal with that problem. At no point has it seemed that anyone in Government actually has a view about whether, and how, markets (in this case rental markets) work, whether or not price fluctuations play a positive/necessary role, or how to consider the trade offs between rent regulation and other relevant variables, such as supply, residential mobility etc.
Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael, in the space of a few years, have advocated both the outgoing RPZ regime (one of the strictest in the world) and our new regime (among the more liberal in Western Europe).
This is very unusual in terms of European politics, because in most countries political parties have, you know, beliefs. For example, about things like markets. So a political party which thinks markets are effective is unlikely to introduce strict rent controls, while a party that believes markets are imperfect and Government intervention can enhance outcomes is unlikely to deregulate rents.
It all amounts to a piecemeal, reactive sort of policy making. Sticking plasters have been placed over many different problems in the housing system. Recent Governments have been very active in addressing specific issues, and spending money on them. But that doesn’t amount to a systemic vision of the housing system. It’s like the fella with an old banger of a car. He sticks the exhaust back on when it’s about to fall off, tapes cardboard over the broken window, and replaces a burst tyre with the spare. All the individual problems have been solved, but he’s still driving an old banger of a car. It’s all tactics, no strategy.
What I’m reading
A new ESRI report on the problems with the home buying process in Ireland received a lot of attention. Progress Ireland look at Ireland’s housing issues through an ‘abundance’ perspective. This looks to be a must read, a new paper from the Equal House project looking at divergence between European housing systems.