Government has helped to create the rent crisis

The zig-zag policy of the Government with regard to the private rented sector and its so-called investors is mind-boggling. One year, disincentives are put in the way of ‘speculators’; the next, they are removed and new incentives put back.

The result of this mismash is a disaster for tens of thousands of workers and young people throughout the country who are waiting on the housing lists.

I refer, in particular, to the tens of thousands of people at the mercy of private landlords — the very speculators who priced the working people out of the market and who now hold them to ransom for rents more suitable to a castle than to a modest, three bedroom, semi-detached house or small apartment.

That is the result of the Government’s housing policy.

Cllr. Noel Collins

“St. Jude’s”

Midleton

Co. Cork