Fingal councillors make emergency appeal to pause rent hikes for council tenants in response to ‘crippling’ living costs
Councillors in Fingal have called to pause rent increases scheduled to kick in this month as a response to the “crippling cost” of fuel, food and transport costs for social housing tenants.
At a Fingal County Council (FCC) meeting this week, 19 councillors voted in support of an emergency motion introduced by Sinn Féin councillor Malachy Quinn who said the Government’s response to the recent fuel protests didn’t go “far enough”.
"In light of the recent acceleration in the cost-of-living crisis, I am calling on this council to support the pausing of council rent increases that will take effect this month," said the motion.
Cllr Quinn said council tenants were struggling with an increase in energy costs and home heating.
“People are at risk of poverty. We have an opportunity to make a positive step towards our council tenants and pause the increases. The proposals by the Government don’t go far enough, but we here in the council can help tenants who badly need our help,” he said.
“For some tenants, it’s simply a choice of heat or eat – an increase in rent at this time will only add to the crippling costs when families are already struggling with energy, poverty, cost-of-living and increased transport costs.”
Council management said that an additional income of €3.3m was expected from the rent increases scheduled from April 26, after the council agreed on its budget last year.
“We are very conscious of what people are going through in council houses and apartments – we have a very active housing team that is tuned-in to the needs of our tenants,” said Director of Housing for FCC, Paul Carroll.
However, council management said that a decision to pause rent is an executive function and votes from the councillors might not have an “impact” on its ultimate decision.
Labour councillor John Walsh told the Irish Independent that it was important to give people time until the next budget was decided in October.
“A number of filling stations in Dublin 15, we were seeing queues of a kind we hadn’t seen in 30 or 40 years. The cost of home heating is at record levels, people are worried they can’t heat their homes,,” he said.
“I think it’s crucial for local authorities to give at least temporary relief to tenants – this motion calls for that breathing space for local authority tenants, and it will buy us time to assess the situation. We hope management listens.”
Independent councillor Jimmy Guerin, who voted against the motion, said it was important to “go ahead” with collecting the rents.
“Our tenants are already being looked after and served well. We are not responsible for what is happening in Iran, not for what could have been a terrible situation with the blockades last week, we need to provide a budget,” he said.
“It’s important that we go ahead – we have already told our tenants of the new rents and now, we have to unfortunately collect these.”
Fine Gael councillor Aoibhinn Tormey also disagreed with the motion highlighting what it will increase costs for the council.
“The proposal is asking to pause [the rents] without taking into account the cost of that and adjustments that need to be made to the budget,” she said.