Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin has said that the government needs to “stand up for renters.”
The Dublin Mid-West TD’s comments come in the wake of new statistics from the Residential Tenancies Board, which recorded a 50% increase in eviction notices in the first three months of 2026.
The RTB said the move can be directly linked to new government legislation, which critics say stacked the deck in favour of landlords over renters.
Ó Broin repeated a similar claim made by Labour and Social Democrats housing spokespeople that Ireland is seeing the highest number of evictions since the famine (a claim which is hard to verify, as historical records were not as extensive as they are now in 2026).
The same RTB report noted that the average rent costs over €26,000 a year in Dublin, and over €20,000 a year nationwide.
Ó Broin remarked that these already sky-high figures were before the government’s changes to rent legislation kicked in on March 1.
“Meanwhile, the government continues to miss its social and affordable housing targets while the number of new private homes for working people to buy remains way behind demand,” he said.
“The consequence of all of this is that more and more renters are now looking for a new place to live. Those who find a place to live will be paying thousands of euro extra a year in rent. Those who can not find a new tenancy will be forced to move back in with their parents, to emigrate or will be forced into homelessness.”
Ó Broin stated “it doesn’t have to be this way,” saying that his party were putting forward policies that would protect renters while “increasing the supply of social, affordable and private for purchase homes.”
Housing was Sinn Féin’s strong suit in the 2020 general election, where they forced Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael into a coalition government with the Greens; despite homeless figures increasing from 10,271 to 14,966 during the 34th Dáil (and have increased to over 17,000 in the most recent round of figures,) housing is no longer Sinn Féin’s unique selling point among voters.
In an attempt to woo back voters who dream of owning a home (or simply want to afford the rent), Ó Broin outlined what Sinn Féin would do differently, saying that “the government must cut rents, ban rent increases and ban no fault evictions. They must also increase and accelerate the delivery of social and genuinely affordable homes.”
He said that the SME builder/developer sector must also be supported, and encouraged to “deliver more good quality private homes for working people to buy.”
“It is time the government stood up for renters rather than for institutional investors and big developers,” the Sinn Féin housing spokesperson said.
“Giving hundreds of millions of euro to apartment developers to build smaller, darker and more expensive apartments is not a solution to the housing crisis. Housing will only be fixed by delivering the right kind of homes, in the right place, at the right price.”