Government Housing Proposals Won’t Stop Housing Vampires

Currently, Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) limit rent increases to the rate of inflation or to 2%, whichever is lower. An area is designated an RPZ only if rent inflation is above 7%; they are a sign that rents are out of control.

The first RPZs were designated in 2016 in Dublin and Cork. More recently, rural places such as Tullow, Castlebar and Drumcliff were designated RPZs. Late in the evening of 9th June 2025 it was leaked to the press that the whole country would be deemed an RPZ.

An RPZ is a desperate measure; a “hail mary”. It is a tiny crucifix to fend off the horde of housing vampires - the landlords, the vulture funds, the Real Estate Investment Trusts. The extension of RPZ status nationwide is an admission that no family is safe. We’re all to be issued with crucifixes. But the crucifixes don’t work.

The half a million households in rented accommodation have good reason to fear what’s coming. Rents are now above €2000 per month and they will continue to rise under this government. What people need, as the undead approach, is Doctor Van Helsing. What they’re getting, in the shape of the current Minister for Housing, James Browne, is a thrall; a servant of the vampires among the living.

James Browne is the latest in a long line of thralls who “let the wrong ones in”. Michael Noonan and his senior officials met private equity funds on sixty-five occasions in 2013 and 2014 letting them into the country to profiteer from people’s need for housing.

Direct state building of housing dropped dead in the years 2011 to 2017 falling to a low of 75 units in 2015.

What followed was and remains, naked class war: low interest rates meant that investment funds funnelled their cash into rental properties and the state refused to build, clearing the market for the profiteers. Big companies like IRES REIT, Kennedy Wilson, Ardstone Capital and the notorious LRC Home Club flocked to the market, rents have been rising ever since.

They did so much damage that only two years after these parasites started their feeding frenzy the first RPZs were designated. Can we put a name to the vampires who’re really calling the shots?

One is the chief executive of the largest vampire landlord IRES REIT, Eddie Byrne. He was recently given a softsoap write up in the Irish Times. He likes rugby and golf, we were told. Who would have guessed? Once the posh-boy back slapping was dispensed with, Byrne told us that IRES REIT were planning to buy up lots of smaller rental units.

They already have 3,734 apartments. They are only the biggest of the 120 landlords that own at least one hundred properties. These 120 operate what is effectively a cartel. They keep rents high, trapping entire generations in penury, never getting a chance to own their own homes, never getting a chance to live a dignified life. The number of landlords of all kinds is increasing. They smell blood.

Byrne then went on to call for RPZs to return to 4%. “When it was at that level, there was investment in apartment building” he said… “an asset generating 4 per cent growth per annum is appealing”.

The call to remove rent caps, to unleash the vampires, has been building up in the middle class media. On 8th May the Chief Economist of Davy went on Morning Ireland on RTE and identified the removal of RPZs as a “lever to increase supply”. On 19th May, Professor Ronan Lyons went on the same programme to call for removal of rent caps to protect investors’ and landlords’ profits.

On 9th June, months into the propaganda campaign, The Irish Times breezily announced that “There has been some concern that the RPZ system has negatively impacted on the level of private investment in new housing developments.”

What else could you expect from the Irish Times other than “won’t someone think of the investors”?

On 10th June, the Minister for Vampires & Landlords, James Browne, brings his proposals to do with RPZs to cabinet. These proposals include:

RPZs will apply to the whole country

As already pointed out, this is a sign that the vampires are running the show. If everyone needs protection we have reached a shameful situation where the government just accepts the presence of these parasites in our midst.

RPZs to be lifted for new build apartments but remain in place for old ones.

Allowing RPZ exemptions for new build apartments is tailor made to line the pockets of billionaire investors: in 2023, 87% of new apartments sold in Dublin were sold to corporate landlords to be rented out at astronomical rents. Now they’ll be allowed to raise rents even more!

Rent increases in new apartments are to be tied to inflation.

The measure tying rent increases to inflation without a 2% cap is aiding and abetting theft from workers. Interest rates are falling. This will stimulate borrowing and spending. Profiteers will chase that money and inflation will rise.

Permission to raise rent when a tenant leaves voluntarily

This may be sold as a disincentive to evict on economic grounds, however isn’t it as likely that landlords will put pressure on vulnerable tenants to leave “voluntarily” so that they won’t have to issue a notice of termination? This could leave vulnerable, migrant families at serious risk of intimidation.

No fault evictions to be banned if a landlord owns more than three properties

This does nothing to help the thousands of families still at risk from “no reason” evictions. Legislation needs to be brought in to protect tenants, like those in Applewood, whose tenancy began before June 2022.

The supply of housing has been deliberately, systematically and ideologically restricted by successive Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour governments. These new measures do nothing to change that situation.

A rational, planned system of housing is possible:

There are 160,000 vacant homes in Ireland - if even a fraction of these were compulsory purchased we would eliminate homelessness - the official 15, 500 homeless as well as those locked in direct provision camps and Travellers in inadequate accommodation.

Not alone do we have the money - the €23 billion exchequer surplus from 2024 alone could build 62,000 houses - we, the workers, made that money. All wealth is produced by workers.

Government subsidies to profiteers must end. They are nothing more than structural violence against the working class: the scandalous Corporate tax Exemption for Vulture Landlords, HAP, First Home, Help to Buy, drawdowns from the Strategic Investment fund, tax breaks on rental profit (RPIR) amount to billions of euros of our money not spent in education, in hospitals, in nursing homes and creches.

We need a state construction company. Setting this up, providing decent, quality jobs for building workers would be a long-term, rational solution. It would be a true stake in the heart of the vampires. The landlords, investors and vultures would be banished but the houses would remain.

None of the more than 500,000 families in rented accommodation should have to pay any more rent. In the first instance, rent is parasitic income. Only workers produce wealth. Sponger parasite landlords sit on their arses and collect it. It is legalised criminality. Middle class common sense will disguise it as “investment” or “providing a service” but if every landlord disappeared tomorrow we would still have houses. If every worker disappeared tomorrow we would have nothing. Crucially, if every worker stood together we would have everything. That is the challenge that lies ahead.