Landlord greed driving young people out of Leitrim

"Landlords and greed are driving our young and mostly qualified professional people in their thousands out of this country annually, due to the spiralling cost of renting a room, an apartment or a house, according to Cathaoirleach, Cllr Justin Warnock who was talking at the latest meeting of Leitrim County Council.

He said this is all exasperated by the Government paying over €500,000 of taxpayers’ money to private landlords to provide 50,000 housing units under HAP or RAS, to families and individuals who need social housing.

Cllr Warnock called on the elected members to write to the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Tanaiste Michael Martin to focus on funding for social housing construction in the upcoming budget.

He said the price of a house in Leitrim has gone from €118,000 in 2016 to €171,000 in 2022. 

"Houses are no longer affordable," he stated, adding that "businesspeople come in and are buying houses and renting them out at astronomical prices."

In 2021, said average rents were €580 and the average price now is over €800 in Leitirm. "59,000 people left Ireland in 2022 and over 40,000 were under the age of 35. We are educating them for export," he said. 

He said that young people have told them they are leaving as they "will never own their own property" but currently, "young people can't afford to live not only in Leitrim but anywhere in the country."

Cllr Enda McGloin said there is a "huge amount of tax on private landlords" adding that many are "losing money". 

He noted that Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has said that he will be examining the tax treatment of landlords as well as the tax credit for renters in the upcoming Budget. 

Cllr Warnock said that he felt the council could "not sit on our hands on a situation where our young people are being forced onto a plane or boat to leave the country because they can't afford to rent a property.

"We should not be funding a half a million of the taxpayers' money to landlords to inflate a price and keep it inflated," he said.

Cllr Felim Gurn said that "we're training people to export them abroad" with Cllr Des Guckian saying "the Government are acting as bystanders".