Record number of eviction notices issued ahead of changes to rental rules
There was a record number of eviction notices for rental properties in Ireland in the first three months of the year ahead of new rental rules that came into effect in March.The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) received 7,062 notices of termination in the first quarter of 2026, up 50 per cent from the same period last year and the highest quarterly figure since the data series began in 2022.The majority of these termination notices (3,138) were received in February, with another 1,998 in January and 1,926 in March. The landlord’s intention to sell the property was listed as the reason for the termination in 60 per cent of cases. 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Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty accused the Government of “presiding over the highest rate of evictions since the famine” following publication of the RTB report.Clashing with Tánaiste Simon Harris in the Dáil on Thursday, Doherty claimed: “You opened the floodgates; you were warned exactly about what would happen.”The Tánaiste said Doherty should not just “cherry pick one figure in isolation” and said the report “actually shows that there was a 39 per cent decrease in the number of termination notices issued” in March compared with February.“There’s also in the report clear signs of continued resilience in the Irish rental sector,” Harris said, noting there were more tenancies and landlords this year compared to the same time last year and a “modest rebound in the availability of rental properties”.[ ‘I sleep easier here’: The makeshift homeless community under the M50Opens in new window ]Doherty accused Harris of making a “deliberate political choice to side with landlords and institutional investors” while renters faced a “brutal” reality. “Families are lying awake at night terrified about the next eviction notice, and workers in their 40s and in their 50s are wondering if they ever will have security again or stability in their lives,” Doherty said.Harris said, since March 1st, rent increases were capped at a maximum of 2 per cent and renters had greater security of tenancy. Rory Hearne, the Social Democrats’ housing spokesperson, described the measures introduced in March as “cruel and deeply flawed”.“It was made clear that these changes would cause not just record evictions but record rents, but the Minister introduced them anyway,” Hearne said in a statement.“The Minister for Housing must be held to account for this drastic misstep and reverse these measures before an even greater number of tenants are kicked out of their homes, as well as introducing a ban on no-fault evictions.”Labour’s housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan also called on Minister for Housing James Browne to introduce an eviction ban to “protect renters from the dysfunctional market”.“Renters have been swindled for years in the housing market, and now they have been utterly abandoned by Government in the middle of a housing emergency,” Sheehan said.“These figures come before the devastating impact of the market reset mechanism is felt, which will allow landlords to reset rents to market rates in between tenancies and bring about the return of double digit rent increases and a return to economic evictions.”Mary Conway, chairperson of the Irish Property Owners Association, said the figures “should be a wake-up call for the Government”. “The continued trend of landlords leaving the market to sell their properties is deeply concerning and further reduces rental supply at a time when demand is already at unprecedented levels,” Conway said on Thursday.“The Government’s rental reforms have further undermined confidence among small and medium-sized landlords, many of whom no longer see a viable future in remaining in the sector,” she added.Meanwhile Focus Ireland warned that while the increase had been widely anticipated in advance of the legislative changes, the scale of the spike highlights deep instability within the private rented sector and a growing risk of increased homelessness when more eviction notices start to expire later in the year. The homelessness charity has called on Government to “respond with urgency by significantly increasing funding for Tenant in Situ purchases to protect families and individuals renting with State supports like the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) who are at a very high risk of losing their homes and entering homelessness. Moreover, with the demand for emergency accommodation already at such high levels, there is a considerable risk that accommodation will not be available for households presenting to homeless services when these NoTs (eviction notices) start to expire.”Speaking at the unveiling of the reportSteen said some landlords “definitely” left the market because of the new rules introduced in March, but “they are being replaced by other landlords”.Registered private and cost-rental tenancies increased by 2.4 per cent year on year to 246,477 in the first quarter of the year, according to the figures. Of these, 5,226 were cost-rental tenancies, which increased by 87 per cent year on year. The number of private landlords rose by 1.3 per cent annually to 105,847, indicating increased participation in the rental market. At the end of March, landlords with one tenancy accounted for 66.2 per cent of all private landlords. The proportion of tenancies provided by landlords with one tenancy was 24.8 per cent in the first quarter.The proportion of tenancies provided by landlords with more than 100 tenancies increased for the 11th consecutive quarter to stand at 15.1 per cent, the highest since the RTB started to publish this data in 2023.In Dublin, landlords with more than 100 tenancies accounted for 29 per cent of all private tenancies registered at the end of March. Outside Dublin, landlords with more than 100 tenancies accounted for 3.9 per cent of all private tenancies.The data was released as part of a quarterly rent index issued by the RTB and the Economic and Social Research Institute.
