Ireland needs the corporate landlord sector to solve the housing crisis, Paschal Donohoe has said. 

Today, the Residential Tenancies Board released a report detailing the changing nature of renting in Ireland.

Notably, tenants in Dublin are increasingly renting from corporate landlords - as opposed to small-time ‘Mum and Dad’ landlords with one or two properties.

In the capital, 22.55% of private tenants have a landlord who owns over 100 properties.

Outside of Dublin, that figure falls to just 2.56% of tenants.

Speaking on The Hard Shoulder, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said the Government cannot solve the housing crisis without the private sector.

“If we want to build more rental accommodation in the future, who can do it?” he said.

“Historically in Ireland, it’s been the smaller landlords - the owner of one, two, three, four, five properties maybe.

“That is now being accompanied by the State that is aiming to build more cost rental accommodation and that takes time to do.

“But those two forces together cannot meet the rental accommodation needs that we know we are going to have in the years ahead.

“[Those] that are capable of filling the gaps are the pension funds, the larger builders that are capable of building these apartments.”

Construction cranes. Photo: Sasko Lazarov/© RollingNews.ie

Also on the programme, Assistant Professor of Social Policy at Maynooth University Rory Hearne said he worried corporate landlords are developing a monopoly in certain parts of Dublin.

“There’s no limit on new rents in terms of new builds,” he said.

“If you own all the properties in a certain area, you can set the market rent.

“I think it has to be quite stark for a lot of people… to look at this huge growth of this corporate ownership of our housing system… and it’s going to increase.

“We’re seeing the main supply of new housing being developed in Dublin is these large build-to-rent corporate owned housing.”

Between March 2023 and March this year, rents in Dublin rose by 4.9%.

There were even bigger outside the capital - with double digit rises recorded in Sligo, Donegal, Cavan and Limerick City.

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Main image: Paschal Donohoe in Brussels. Picture by: Alamy Stock Photo