Ministers will be asked to criminalise sex-for-rent arrangements

Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin will raise the matter with Darragh O’Brien and Helen McEntee when the Dáil reconvenes.

The minister for housing and the minister for justice will be asked to criminalise sex-for-rent arrangements in the coming weeks.

Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin will raise the matter with Darragh O’Brien and Helen McEntee when the Dáil reconvenes.

It follows this week’s Irish Examiner investigation, which found accommodation is being offered at reduced rent or rent-free in return for sex, in Newcastlewest, Co Limerick, and in Dublin.

Mr Ó Broin said: “As soon as the Dáil reconvenes, I will be raising this with the minister for housing and the minister for justice to ensure that both departments work quickly together to ensure this kind of thing is prosecutable. It is absolutely unacceptable. You could have people who have very acute housing needs and who are in very vulnerable positions being seriously exploited if this is allowed take root.”

He said platforms hosting such adverts should face fines while landlords offering such arrangements also need to be prosecuted.

Fianna Fáil councillor Michael Collins, who runs an auctioneering business in Newcastlewest, said locals are horrified.

“It isn’t something you would expect anywhere, not to mind a rural county town,” he said. “I am absolutely shocked.”

He said he knows of a family desperately seeking housing in the area as they have to leave accommodation in January.

Threshold chief executive John Mark McCafferty said such arrangements are an “indictment of society and the imbalance in terms of gender relations and the predatory behaviour of certain people.”

The issue will be discussed by the Oireachtas committee on housing in January.