{"id":172815,"date":"2025-11-10T08:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/172815\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T08:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:39:07","slug":"dublin-city-council-tenants-face-rent-rises-up-to-50-in-first-overhaul-in-30-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/172815\/","title":{"rendered":"Dublin City Council tenants face rent rises up to 50% in first overhaul in 30 years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dublin City Council<\/a> tenants face rent<\/a> rises from next year, some of which could be more than 50 per cent, in the first major shake up of the city\u2019s social housing<\/a> rent system in 30 years.<\/p>\n

The council plans to change how it calculates rents so higher earners pay more, but tenants of all incomes can expect increases, as the local authority attempts to fill a \u20ac55.5 million funding gap in its housing maintenance budget.<\/p>\n

The move comes after an analysis of tenant incomes found more than a fifth of council households have an after-tax income greater than \u20ac1,000 a week but are paying heavily subsidised rents, with the average charge across the scheme \u20ac83 per week.<\/p>\n

The council operates a \u201cdifferential\u201d rent system, with rents based on the net incomes of tenants. The principal earner in a household pays 15 per cent of their net weekly income exceeding \u20ac32. Up to four subsidiary earners pay a contribution to a maximum of \u20ac21 each a week \u2013 no more than \u20ac84 in total.<\/p>\n

Documents seen by The Irish Times show the council wants to increase the principal tenant charge to 18 per cent, but raise the unassessed portion of income from \u20ac32 to \u20ac50. Subsidiary earners\u2019 contributions would almost double to \u20ac40 each a week, and the cap on the number of subsidiary earners charged would be removed.<\/p>\n

The council also plans to increase the assessable income of self-employed tenants. Currently, taxi drivers and other \u201cnon-trade\u201d businesses are assessed on an \u201cassumed net income\u201d of \u20ac500 a week, whiles tradespeople \u2013 plumbers, electricians, etc \u2013 are assumed to have a net income of \u20ac560 a week. This will be increased to \u20ac700 for all self-employed tenants.<\/p>\n

The documents state the current system \u201cbenefits higher-income households in tenancies\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Garda\u00ed and nurses among \u2018key workers\u2019 eligible to rent new low-cost Dublin city homesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Of the council\u2019s stock of just over 26,000 flats and houses, 5,854 are occupied by households with net incomes of more than \u20ac1,000 a week.<\/p>\n

The new system, while it would result in increases across the board, sees lowest-income tenants pay about 10 per cent more, but higher earners\u2019 rents increase significantly.<\/p>\n

More than half of principal earners have net incomes exceeding \u20ac400 a week. If someone at the lowest end of that cohort, on \u20ac400, lives alone they can expect a 14 per cent increase. If they live with two adult earners the rent will increase by 47 per cent, but if there are four additional adults in the house, the rent will rise by 60 per cent.<\/p>\n

The gap between council funds for housing maintenance and annual income is \u20ac55.5 million. The changes to the system would result in additional income of \u20ac35.5 million, with almost \u20ac21 million of that provided through the new charges on secondary earners, the documents show.<\/p>\n

Independent councillor Mannix Flynn<\/a> said rent increases were \u201cpremature\u201d when many council tenants were living in substandard conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have all sorts of problems with these buildings that, let\u2019s face it, are not the tenants\u2019 fault; responsibility rests with the local authority.\u201d <\/p>\n

Low rents paid by secondary earners was a problem, he said, but this was an \u201canomaly created by the city council and allowed to continue by the city council\u201d.<\/p>\n

The council should seek Government funding to address the maintenance deficits, instead of asking tenants to assume the burden, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Government is awash with cash, and people living in the most dilapidated accommodation are being asked to pony up the money to solve this problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cChild poverty in the city is heavily concentrated in social housing, this is going to exacerbate that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin City Council tenants face rent rises from next year, some of which could be more than 50…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,52,784,18,19,17,98639,4097,19142],"class_list":{"0":"post-172815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-dublin-city-council","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mannix-flynn","15":"tag-renting","16":"tag-social-housing"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115524505671281997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}