Landlords ‘exploiting people for fast buck’, says John Halligan

A war of words has broken out between landlords and John Halligan, with the minister insisting the “bastards” should be jailed and saying that a “sizeable minority” of them are making money out of people’s misfortunes.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner last night, Mr Halligan went further and warned landlords he “would take them on” and promised during the lifetime of this Dáil to bring in legislation to “force them to charge reasonable rents”.

Mr Halligan was strongly criticised yesterday by a landlords group for his recent comments that speculating landlords were “driving people into homelessness” and that he “would jail the bastards”.