Emergency laws to extend RPZs nationwide will be pushed through this week

Housing minister says it is a matter of 'priority and urgency' to extend RPZs across the entire country to prevent landlords from hiking rents by more than 2% per year

Housing minister James Browne and junior minister for planning John Cummins speaking to the media after Tuesday's Cabinet meeting about RPZ plans. Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews

New emergency laws to extend rent pressure zones (RPZs) across the country are set to be pushed through by the end of the week, despite accusations that they have “not been thought through”.

James Browne, the housing minister, has said it is a matter of “priority and urgency” to extend RPZs across the entire country to prevent landlords from hiking rents by more than 2% per year.

Mr Browne has conceded that it would be “unworkable” to introduce “special exemptions” for students living in the private rental sector to prevent rents being reset when they leave a property.

“There’s always challenges like that. Students, nurses, gardaí, doctors, consultants,” said Mr Browne.

“I think, to try and engineer into the legislation that a landlord would then have to identify what that person’s role is. Are they a student? Are they a full-time student, a part-time student, or what qualifies a student? It will be unworkable and I think it would be unenforceable in those particular sets of circumstances.”

The new laws will expand existing RPZ protections to the approximately 17% of tenancies across the country which are not currently in rent-controlled areas.

Despite criticism by opposition TDs in the Dáil on Tuesday night, the Dáil schedule for Wednesday has been revised to allow the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill 2025 go through all of its stages.

It is expected the legislation will then move to the Seanad for further approval tomorrow before the bill is signed into law by the President on Friday.

At present, landlords outside RPZs are not restricted in how much they can increase the rents they charge each year.

The changes to introduce a national RPZ come ahead of wider rental reform from the Government expected to come into effect on March 1, 2026.

The new proposals will allow for landlords to reset their rents either after six years or if a tenant voluntarily leaves the property. Mr Browne said: 

I do need the support and expect the support of the opposition to do this as well. 

Labour housing spokesman Conor Sheehan said the Government’s response to a Sinn Féin motion supported by the opposition and debated last night was “very disappointing”.

He said the Coalition has effectively “thrown renters under a bus by completely undermining housing options for young people, for students, for junior doctors , for transient, and migrant workers”.

TDs recounted being contacted by constituents who were sleeping in their cars, with Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty stating the Government, in its “ivory towers”, does not recognise that “it’s not just raining, but it’s lashing on ordinary people the length and breadth of the country”. Mr Doherty told the housing minister: 

You don’t get it, you don’t get what people are going through. 

Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne described the housing, rent, and homelessness crisis as a “social catastrophe” and raised the “despair and anxiety” of 500,000 people stuck in their childhood bedrooms and unable to see a time when they can hope to begin their adult lives.

He added that housing is human right and hit out at decades of bad decisions from successive governments, which has focused on “investor funds and corporate landlords profiting from housing”.

Labour has submitted emergency amendments to the Government’s bill which would  introduce a two-year rent freeze and roll out fines of up to €100,000 for landlords breaking the law. It is expected that other opposition parties will also table amendments to the proposed laws.