Housing crisis “spiralling out of control” says Boyd Barrett

New data released by the Residential Tenancies Board shows that the number of eviction notices issued by landlords increased by 41% in the last quarter of 2025 compared to the final quarter in 2024.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the statistics show that the housing crisis “continues to spiral out of control”

The RTB revealed that eviction notices increased by 41% in the last quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. The RTB also said that 62% of eviction notices were because the landlord plans to sell the property.

“Recently The Department of Housing reported that 17,112 people were in emergency homeless accommodation in January. Of these, 5,319 were children. These are record highs and we know that a third of those in emergency accommodation are there because they were evicted from their private rental homes. They would not be homeless if the Government had not lifted the ban on no fault evictions. This is a government made crisis,” Boyd Barrett stated.

“This emphasises once again the urgent need for a dramatic ramping up of the tenant-in-situ scheme so tenants can stay in their homes when landlords sell, and for the reintroduction of an eviction ban to stop people being evicted into homelessness through no fault of their own.”

The Dún Laoghaire TD said “I have been warning for years that the focus of the government and developers on building 1 and 2 bed homes, has been a strategy for increasing profits for the developers. It has also allowed the government to boast about the number of units delivered rather than delivering the much-needed family homes.”

“Every week in our clinic we see families with eviction notices and, despite years on the housing list, no hope of getting a home. The lack of 3 and 4 bed family homes is so extreme that we now see people waiting 10 and 12 years. In the private rental sector, the average rent for a 3-bed home is now €3,000 per month, way above HAP levels

“We cannot tolerate a situation where over 17,000 are in emergency accommodation and we will not tolerate Government attempts to normalise this.

“The only way this crisis can be halted and reversed is for Councils to build and buy homes to accommodate those on the social housing list or for cost rental,” he said.