Ireland is currently experiencing a crisis in the rental market with eviction figures possibly not seen on this island since the mid-19th century. In addition, the most recent Daft.ie rental report shows rents have risen and that housing availability remains low, adding to the pressures felt by renter households.
The total number of notices-of-termination received by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) was 20,033 in 2025, a 21 per cent increase from 2024. While the number of termination notices had actually fallen in the last quarter of 2025, this appears to have been a stay of execution. The first quarter of 2026 witnessed a rapid increase in termination notices , up 36 per cent from the previous quarter and 50 per cent higher than the numbers seen in the first quarter of 2025.
The immediate culprit for the rise in termination notices was the anticipation of new legislation coming into force for new tenancies in March 2026. The new regulations, while well intentioned, had inadvertently caused termination notices to spike. The main stated reason for notices of termination was landlords intending to sell their property, which meant they were effectively exiting the rental market. This is clear in RTB data, where the number of landlords intending to sell their property rose from 3,226 in the final quarter of 2025 to 4,259 in the first quarter of 2026.
Looking solely at the figures provided by the RTB, this level of possible ejectment does not appear to compare favourably to that seen in Ireland in the mid-19th century. For instance, in the pre-famine years of the early 1840s, there were an average of 5,000 civil bill ejectments brought against around 14,000 defenfants annually in a country with a much larger population of over eight million people.*
Of course, there are important differences between then and now. Household sizes were for instance much larger in the 19th century: an average of 4.85 people were displaced per eviction from 1849 to 1880. In the 2021 census, the average household size was 2.74. Today’s termination figures therefore imply fewer people per household are affected.
But another comparison is more revealing. It involves the rate of evictions relative to the number of households. Between 1855 and 1877, the eviction rate according to RIC figures was 0.14 per 100 holdings, rising to 0.48 per 100 during the Land War. Again, using the 2021 census figure of 1.95 million households, the rate implied by the 2025 RTB data is roughly one termination notice per 100 households (and higher if we only consider rented households). Most of these notices do not lead to formal evictions but they often likely have the effect of causing tenants to vacate the property. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the rates of people leaving properties on foot of termination notices are by no means out of line with those found, at times, in the 19th century.
The comparison between termination notices in the present and those in the 19th century has become a talking point for the Opposition parties. In March, Labour TD Conor Sheehan noted Ireland was living through the “highest rate of evictions since the famine“, which started in 1845.
The famine reference resurfaced last week, this time from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald. The Taoiseach’s response was that it was “just plain stupid to go on about the greatest evictions since the famine”. For Micheál Martin to so easily dismiss this historical comparison is surprising.
It is important to stress that comparisons of this kind, while complex, are standard practice among economic and social science historians seeking to identify long-term trends and patterns. The Taoiseach did not elaborate on his comment other than to claim that raising these findings is “not being serious about our housing problems”.
Historical research can illuminate our present circumstance by highlighting not only remarkable changes and transformations in our economic, social and political life, but also enduring features. In particular, this can relate to how, despite extraordinary changes in Irish society and changes in land ownership and control, inequalities and imbalances of power in the relationships between landlord and tenants are again marked features of Irish life.
This is the case nearly 150 years after Irish farmers and labourers combined to challenge the overweening power of landlords during the Land War. The contemporary solution to this was tenant-proprietorship and tenurial security. Security of tenure became central to Irish political identity. This was only achieved through agitation on the ground, culminating in state-funded mortgages that transferred assets (land and homes thereon) from landlords to tenants.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that tenants today are in a weaker position in their relationship with landlords than they were at the foundation of the State. This is most obviously reflected in the high rate of termination notices in Ireland in the present day. For the Taoiseach to dismiss drawing attention to historical parallels suggests such parallels are irrelevant to Government thinking. It also suggests the Taoiseach’s heavy policy emphasis on “supply” alone solving the housing crisis is largely divorced from wider considerations of fairness and social justice that motivated some major Irish political leaders in the past.
In fact, while the Taoiseach was right to highlight the “continued growth” in housing supply. RTB data show the increase in private tenancies was only 40 per cent of the number of termination notices issued in the first quarter of the year. There is clearly a fundamental problem in Ireland’s housing market.
Societies tend to reach for historical analogies in times of crisis. While the historical comparison is revealing, the more pertinent point is that Ireland may have one of the highest eviction rates in the OECD. Only an estimated 1 per cent or less of renters appear subject to eviction orders annually in much of western Europe, but the rate in Ireland based on census rental household figures for 2022 is now 3.89 per cent. If we only use RTB data on terminations and private tenancies, and exclude non-registered rental properties, this rate is even higher at more than 8.22 per cent. That is higher than the United States, which has very high rates by international standards and, as a result, high levels of homelessness; a dynamic that is increasingly visible in Ireland.
Despite the vast wealth generated in Ireland in the past two decades, why does this country have such trouble housing its people? Perhaps the more important comparison is not with Ireland’s past, but with Ireland’s peers in the present. International comparisions are, of course, by no means unproblematic exercises but if these figures reflect the wider reality then the uncomfortable truth is that many renters in contemporary Ireland now experience levels of insecurity that would seem extraordinary elsewhere in the OECD. This is something that should be a great cause of concern to policymakers in Dublin. It should be subjected to further analysis rather than a supply-will-solve-everything approach.
Eoin McLaughlin is Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Inclusive Wealth of Nations, Bloomsbury.
Richard Mc Mahon is a Lecturer in History at MIC, Limerick and is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.
*This article was amended on May 27th, 2026 to include some additional information
