Dublin City Council is considering raising rents for its tenants

Dublin City Council is setting up a new subcommittee to examine whether the council should raise rents for its tenants.

This comes after councillors at a meeting of the finance committee last Thursday, and a meeting of the housing committee on Monday, heard that the council doesn’t take in enough in rents to manage its houses and apartments.

The council took in €110 million last year in rents, but in the same year it shelled out €180 million on maintaining and administering the 29,000 or so homes it owns in the city, according to a report to councillors.

“I think we need to look at a complete revision of the rent scheme and what that would mean,” said Frank d’Arcy, the council’s director of housing operations, at the finance committee on 20 March.

Dublin City Council sets its rents at 15 percent of the primary earner’s income, while some other councils charge more, d’Arcy said.

An increase of 1 percent would bring in around €6.5 million more each year, he said. “I think we should look at that in relation to bridging the gap.”

No decision has been made yet on whether to increase rents, said Sinn Féin Councillor Séamas McGrattan, who chairs the finance committee.

But McGrattan said he expects any increase wouldn’t be aimed at very low income tenants. “Some people could be making high salaries,” he said by phone on Friday.

Michelle Norris, professor of social policy at University College Dublin, who sat on the Housing Commission, said that, “in the view of the commission the whole model needs replacing”.

Rent should not be a percentage of a tenant’s income but linked to the cost of delivering and maintaining the housing, Norris said. A subsidy should be available for tenants who cannot afford that rent, she said.

That system is in place in most western European countries with substantial public housing, Norris said.

Any increase in rent is likely to be met with pushback though by those council tenants – from the Oliver Bond flats in Dublin 8, to Cromcastle Court in Kilmore West, for example – who have complained for years about living in damp, mouldy buildings.

Gayle Cullen Doyle, chairperson of the Oliver Bond Residents Group, says she wouldn’t agree with any rent increases while the condition of her home is substandard.

“The homes would need to be up to EU standards before any rent increases come in,” she said.

The number of Dublin City Council tenancies increased from around 25,000 in 2021 to almost 26,500 in 2025, said Clive Ahern, a senior executive officer at the council, speaking to the finance committee last Thursday.

That only includes tenancies in council-owned homes, not tenancies in homes the council leases, or that the council supports with rent subsidies like RAS or HAP for tenants in private rentals.

The council has been bringing in more each year for the past five years from tenants in the homes it owns, Ahern says. Total rents increased from €93 million in 2021 to €110 million in 2024, he says.

But that still doesn’t match maintenance costs, which ran to €180 million last year, he said.

Actually, Dublin City Council’s budget for 2025 says it spent only about €96 million on “Maintenance/Improvement of LA [local authority] Housing Units” in 2024.

How did Ahern get from there to €180 million? McGrattan, the finance committee chair, says the larger figure is the “overall running costs”.

So that would include additional costs like borrowing to do up council properties between tenants, possibly some of the administration (doing assessments, allocating homes, collecting rents, chasing arrears), paying for the electricity and heating costs in some senior citizens’ complexes, and more, he said.

Meanwhile, Dublin City Council charges rents of 15 percent of the primary earner’s income, Ahern said. The council also collects €21 per week from other people with an income in the household, says a council report.

Ahern said there are different ways the council can increase rents, from relooking at how it deals with other tenants in the household, apart from the primary earner – and when it caps the overall household rent.

“There are lots of different levers when it comes to it,” he said.

Some other councils charge a higher percentage, says the council presentation to the housing committee on Monday.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Daryl Barron asked what percentage of income the four other Dublin local authorities charge in rents.

South Dublin County Council charges a weekly rent of 10 percent of household income plus €3, and an additional 10 percent on any income earned in excess of the social housing income threshold, which rises from €40,000 net a year for a single adult, depending on the number of people in the household.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council charges rent at 16 percent of the primary earner’s income, and a maximum rent of €20 per week for each additional tenant with an income.

Fingal County Council charges 12 percent of the primary earner’s income, and caps the contribution from secondary tenants at €40 per week.

Need to plug the gap

McGrattan says the council needs to do a lot of work to improve standards in council housing, and it can’t rely on the central government to fund everything. “There is a gap there and we need to plug that gap.”

The council has been trying to collect as much rent as possible, chasing rent arrears and carrying out annual rent reviews, where previously it checked those every second year. It also started a new charge for heating maintenance in 2025, according to that year’s budget.

Sinn Féin Councillor Kourtney Kenny asked at the finance committee meeting if the council’s housing maintenance costs are high because some properties are old and require substantial renovation.

“Are we just putting a band-aid over something that really needs a deep retrofit?” she said.

The council has “antiquated housing stock”, said D’Arcy, the housing operations manager. So it faces major challenges trying to keep homes up to standard and regenerate flat complexes, he says.

Around 80 percent of Dublin City Council homes were built before the introduction of building regulations in 1991, said Robert Buckley, a senior engineer with Dublin City Council, at the housing committee meeting Monday.

The cost of maintenance is increasing, as the costs of labour and construction materials rise, Buckley said.

Norris, the UCD professor who sat on the Housing Commission, says that, “If you look at rural local authorities their spending on maintenance is way below their rental income.”

But that is partly because they sell off their houses to tenants, and so the home is often bought out before it needs significant upgrading, she says.

In urban areas it’s the opposite, Norris says, with income from rents insufficient to pay for managing and maintaining the homes.

As a result, urban councils tend to respond to complaints rather than do proactive renovations “There is insufficient investment in cyclical maintenance and upgrading,” says Norris.

This results in poor quality homes and eventually leads to high levels of spending on major regeneration projects.

“In the view of the Commission, a lot of this should be done as maintenance and upgrading on an ongoing basis and it would be cheaper,” she says.

Council housing manager Mick Mulhern, said at the housing committee on Monday that the council is moving towards doing more planned maintenance and is increasing the number of staff working on that.

“There is an increasing push towards planned maintenance,” he said. To do large-scale condition surveys of housing stock and then carry out upgrades, he said.

Significant investment will be needed in the long term, Mulhern said. “The state has indicated that there is additional funding on the planned maintenance side, but there is a process we need to go through to get ourselves match fit for that work.”

Should the council increase rents?

For councils to get the money they need to improve standards in council housing, through ongoing planned maintenance and upgrades, the Housing Commission recommended increasing council rents for those tenants who can afford it, says Norris, the UCD professor who was on the commission.

There would need to be a subsidy, like HAP, for those who cannot afford the cost, she says.

In most western European countries with substantial public housing, they use cost-rental systems, Norris says. “Generally, the rents cover the costs.”

This was also the case in Ireland before 1966, which allowed the state to build much-needed social housing, says Norris.

The fact that rents no longer cover costs in Dublin City Council housing is a problem, she says.

Secondary earners currently pay a maximum of €21 per week in Dublin City Council housing, although they might have a full time wage. “There certainly is an argument for them contributing more in my view,” says Norris, by phone on Monday.

But Independents for Change Councillor Pat Dunne said at the housing committee meeting. “Let’s not get excited about ideas like increasing the rent.”

People have had rent increases, Dunne says. For example, when a pensioner gets an increase in the state pension, their rent goes up, he says.

Gayle Cullen Doyle, chairperson of the Oliver Bond Residents Group, says tenants are “paying enough as it is for the conditions we live in”.

Lots of people are struggling to get by, she says. “The cost of living is off the wall as it is.”

Any increase in council rent would also affect HAP tenants in the Dublin City Council area, who also pay a differential rent based on the local authority’s rents – and many of them pay significant additional rent on top of that to the landlord.

And the rent increase could be even tougher on HAP tenants than on council tenants.

Social housing tenants, including households in receipt of rent subsidies, are at increased risk of poverty compared to the general population, says Louise Bayliss, head of social justice and policy at the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SVP).

Around 18 percent of Ireland’s population are at risk of poverty after they pay for housing costs, says Bayliss, quoting statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) from 202, but that rises to 44 percent for council tenants and 58 percent for households in receipt of rent subsidies.

“On a daily basis, we hear the worries of people who just can’t make ends meet because of the increases in the cost of food and heating,” Bayliss says.

“HAP top-ups are leaving many households without the capacity to meet their basic needs and without the support of SVP, there is no doubt some households would have no choice but to cut back on food and heating,” she says.