building houses the guaranteed road to riches it once was, and we have a perfect
storm. Cue the return of multi-billionaire developers.
Grim and grimmer
Elsewhere in this issue ‘Mortgage Miseries’ covers the situation faced by those
whose homes are under threat of repossession. For those dependent on the rental
market, the picture gets ever more grim.
According to the Daft.ie Rental Price Report, in 2016 the annual rate of rental
inflation (13.5% in the final quarter of 2016) was the highest in the history of the
report. ‘The rate of inflation in rents is high across the country, with only Connacht
seeing inflation of less than 10% currently, of all the major regions. (Its rate of
inflation is 8.9%.)
‘Indeed, in 45 of the 54 sub-markets analysed, there is double-digit inflation in
rents currently. In Dublin, rents are now rising by almost 15% a year, the highest
since the middle of 2014. It means that rents in the capital are now up almost 65%
from their lowest point in 2010 and are a full 14% higher than their previous peak at
the start of 2008. In the four other cities, inflation has eased back somewhat in
recent months but remains between 10% and 13%.’ (The Daft.ie Rental Price Report,
2016).
In real terms, this
South
South
City
means that the total income,
Dublin City Co.Dublin
Centre
before deductions, of an
individual or family on
€1,663
€1,455
€1,581
minimum pay for a steady 35-
hour week (€1401.34)
wouldn’t cover the average rent in most of Dublin at the end of 2016.
North City
€1,365
And that was before Simon Coveney’s intervention.
Adding to the misery, Coveney sent a clear signal to private-sector landlords: he
will ‘soon’ be restricting their ability to increase rents to a mere 4% a year. This
useful information for landlords has resulted in massive increases in the cost of
private rentals across the country.
Any strategy that leads to increased rents will inevitably result in increasing
numbers of individual and families made homeless. And any housing strategy coming
from the last two Governments has had the effect of increasing rents. That’s what I
call policy-driven.
Trolley follies
In health, records for the number of admitted patients lying on trolleys are
broken every year. In fact, in my one experience of being admitted to an Irish
hospital, I found that trolleys were a comparative luxury. I saw a number of people,
including a woman in her eighties, trying to sleep on armchairs. I had no such luck.
After eleven hours in the waiting room, I was admitted at just after midnight on