Government’s proposed rental reforms are a gamble – and renters will fund the bet
Tuesday of this week saw the announcement of a new wave of reforms, which, according to the Government, will usher in the most significant extension of renter rights in a generation. However, what has been evident across the immediate reaction to Tuesday’s news is that, much like housing policy itself, faith in such an assertion seems to be in short supply.
One of the central pillars for the Government’s assertion that these new reforms represent an extension of renter rights – apart from the (long overdue) ban on no-fault evictions for landlords with four or more properties – is the Cabinet approval received by Housing Minister James Browne to extend current rent pressure zones (RPZs) into a nationwide rent control system.
First introduced nearly a decade ago – in 2016 – the initial rollout of RPZs targeted major urban centres experiencing rapid rent growth, capping annual rent increases at 2% (or inflation if lower) in designated high-demand areas. The introduction of RPZs was an emergency response, prompted by the financial crisis and property crash of 2008-2012. And while the policy was significant in terms of curbing runaway rent inflation and providing better security at a time of great urgency, its impact was limited, by definition, to the parts of the country where the rental sector was under the most pressure; over time, most of the country caught up with the State’s biggest problem areas, meeting the criteria to become RPZs themselves, with 111 of our 166 local electoral areas now under the current rent cap system.
As a result, we now find ourselves in a difficult position not unlike the one we found ourselves in a decade ago; a position which merits the kind of emergency response we saw in 2016. At a glance, this would seem to be the fuel behind the nationwide expansion of RPZs, behind the slate of measures included in Tuesday’s announcement. But as much as the State is heralding these proposed reforms as a boon for renters and renter rights, there appears to be a bit of Trojan-horse-ery at play.
From March 1st 2026, when Tuesday’s announcements are set to be introduced, the statewide RPZs will operate with major differences to current RPZs. Landlords will be explicitly allowed to reset to market rent between tenants who leave voluntarily, new-build properties (currently exempt from RPZ rules for the first two years, with the 2% cap in effect thereafter) will now have rent increases linked to inflation as opposed to the 2% cap, and in the case of long leases, after a period of six years landlords will be able to reset to market rent if the tenancy continues.
These details, buried in the footnotes of Tuesday’s announcement, are where the proposed reforms begin to look less and less like the undeniable extension of renter rights the Government are aiming to represent them as. They offer headline-friendly protections – a nationwide cap and the appearance of uniform standards – while embedding mechanisms that will allow landlords to continue extracting higher rents over time.
And make no mistake, this facilitation of higher rents is intentional – in fact, ‘necessary’, according to the Government. The Department of Housing’s own explanation note accepts that “the provision to reset rents between tenancies may see some rent inflation”, but maintains this “will moderate as new supply comes on-stream”.
After all, a major problem facing the State in tackling the housing issue is, as mentioned at the top of this article, supply. It is a problem that constantly begets more problems for the sector; housing supply has not kept pace with demand for over a decade, leading to sustained rent inflation almost everywhere, and perpetuating a cycle where the availability of affordable accommodation slips further and further out of reach.
In tackling the housing crisis, the Government needs to strike a difficult balance: a balance that encourages supply through economic viability for landlords and investors, while not souring renters with a complete abandonment of protections. In the Government’s eyes, the required trade-off comes not in the form of tax incentives or a dramatic acceleration in social and affordable housing delivery – notably absent from Tuesday’s announcements – but instead, with a set of proposed reforms painted as an extension of renters’ rights to obscure it from appearing as the political gamble it really is – a political gamble the nation’s battered renters are to fund the bet for.
And though it remains to be seen how these ‘once in a generation’ reforms will play out, for a generation already struggling under the weight of housing costs, that is a gamble they can scarcely afford.
