Independent TD for Laois-Offaly Carol Nolan has described rental price increases as a source of “unimaginable anxiety and stress” for families and renters.
The remarks came following a Daft.ie report which revealed the highest year-on-year increase in rent prices since the site began the report in 2005.
The Independent TD said the housing crisis and rental price increases are “wiping out people’s capacity to even consider saving for a mortgage.”
“The scale of this crisis is almost surreal,” she said, adding that the situation was like a “living nightmare.”
“Every single day that my offices are open we are hearing from people desperately clinging on to their homes. They are being broken by a relentlessly cruel and dysfunctional housing market that is simply incapable of meeting their needs.”
She added that the rent price increases, coupled with rising cost of living and back to school costs, was a recipe for a “perfect storm” of hardship which would lead to “fuel and food poverty.”
“Government simply has not delivered housing at the kind of scale and ambition that is needed,” she said.
“Instead, it has chosen to pursue policies that are indirectly, but categorically, having an adverse impact on availability, such as the promotion of offering own-door accommodation within four months, from the state, to anyone who arrives here from anywhere in the world seeking international protection.”
She continued, saying that “this approach serves no one.”
“We are placing our own people under dire social and financial stress and displaced persons on to the floors of hotels or converted buildings,” she said.
“The Government must pull out all the stops to escalate and fast track delivery of housing, both social and affordable, and this includes immediately revising the labyrinthine and bureaucratic mess that is the planning process.”