Sinn Fein Councillor demands roadmap on how rent hikes will fix damp homes
A Sinn Fein councillor has call for clarity around exactly how funds raised from incoming increases in social housing rents on Dublin City Council tenants will be spent.
Councillor Kourtney Kenny has tabled a motion requesting a detailed report be compiled on how the upcoming rent hike will benefit tenants who have endured “persistent and long standing issues.” These include, but are not limited to “damp, mould, inadequate insulation, and poor heating efficiency” which “directly affect the tenant’s health, wellbeing and impacts them financially.”
A majority of councillors voted to increase social housing tenants' rent back in November 2025, with the rationale being that the raise was required to generate the necessary funds to carry out much-needed housing maintenance and repair works across the city. The increase will come into effect in April and is expected to bring in an estimated additional €33 million over a 12 month period.
Cllr Kenny spoke to Dublin Live about the importance of ensuring these funds are used for housing maintenance and said her own experience as a council tenant in a home built in 1932 means she knows first-hand the dire need to retrofit many outdated and rundown council-owned houses.
She said there are so many houses “black with mould” whose energy ratings are not up to par with modern standards. While many tenants have raised maintenance concerns with the council, Cllr Kenny stressed that waiting times can be long and that there should be a login portal system online where tenants can track their issue and no longer be left in limbo wondering when it will be solved.
“The inner-city complexes are among the oldest housing stock in the city and therefore in the greatest need of comprehensive maintenance, deep retrofitting and upgrading works to bring them up to modern living standards. Our tenants and councillors require clarity and assurance that the financial burden placed on tenants will directly result in tangible improvements to living conditions,” Cllr Kenny outlined in a motion set to go before the full council at an upcoming meeting.
Cllr Kenny is calling on the council to outline the criteria for how homes will be assessed and prioritised for upcoming works. She said the age, condition, and energy performances of council houses should be given particular regard.
She has highlighted the importance of identifying priority sites of the worst affected complexes , and to outline how councillors will be kept informed on their progress. She has questioned what reporting mechanism will be put in place to “track expenditure, timelines, and outcomes” of upcoming maintenance works.
The South East Inner City rep believes these criteria are important as, for many tenants, maintenance works have been a “cloak and dagger” operation without proper clarity or timelines. She said that tenants often wait months for a specialist to arrive at their property, only to be given a short-term fix that doesn’t address root problems in the houses.
Not only do tenants have to deal with aesthetic problems of subpar housing stock, but this has a direct impact on their mental health, Cllr Kenny explained. She argued that leaving people in poor conditions after they have gone through so much to secure a council home can be “traumatic.”
“Tenants get a place and they’re happy and full of pride, but to be kept in the dark brings back a cycle of shame and dehumanisation,” she said. However, Cllr Kenny argued that if tenants could see that a job had been logged and viewed with a contractor assigned for a certain date and time it would make waiting a lot more manageable psychologically.
While all of these measures would go a long way toward addressing the concerns council tenants have regarding maintenance, Cllr Kenny still questioned the justification behind the rent hikes in the first place. She pointed out the large sums of money that are often spent on other housing projects and said when it comes to deficit in maintenance costs “the maths isn’t math-ing to me.”
She said putting the funding burden on families already living in cramped, multi-generational social housing does not feel like an appropriate solution and highlighted a tenant, now with adult children, waiting 17 years on the housing transfer list as a prime example of the systemic failures facing Dublin families. “Those kids are saving for a mortgage and now they’re going to be charged extra by living in cramped conditions,” she said.
Dublin City Council will be introducing a new Differential Rent Scheme from 6 April 2026.
The differential rent scheme is an income-based assessment and affects tenants in different ways depending on their earnings, rents will vary from home to home. Today the average rent charge in Dublin City Council is €83 per week or €360 per month. This equates to 12% of net income earned.
On average the proposed changes will increase the average percentage of household income spent on rent from 12% to 13%. The average increase of household rent across all tenancies would be €24 per week and the average rent will amount to €108 per week or €470 per month. The lowest rent that will be charged to the lowest income households would be €35.82 a week or €155.22 per month.
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme