THE GOVERNMENT IS asking members of the public to participate in a review of the country’s rental market in order to help ascertain what an “improved fully functioning private rental sector should look like”.

This review is part of the Department of Housing’s updated ‘Housing for All’ plan that was committed to in November of last year.

The review is intended to draw conclusions on how the housing system can be improved to provide a viable “safe and secure framework” for both “landlords and tenants”, the Department has stated.

The public consultation process will be carried out through an online form.

Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said that the Government is focused on increasing supply of “all kinds of safe and secure housing” including rental, as well as the need to protect renters while retaining landlords in the system”.

Speaking about the review, he said that his Department are encouraging people to offer their “views, experiences and perspectives on the private rental sector in Ireland”.

In a document setting out the remit of the review, the Department states that the rental sector provides a “source of accommodation for households prior to their movement to other tenures”.

“Many people live in private rented housing during early adulthood, having left the parental home,” the Department further states.

It adds that rental housing stock provides an “important adjunct to the social housing stock, as market subsidies such as the Housing Assistance Payment provide social housing supports to low income households renting a private market dwelling”.

The Document says that the composition of Ireland’s rental sector has changed since 2016, when the proportion of households headed by a non-Irish national was just under 40%, “a proportion which seems to have grown in the intervening years”.

It further says that amongst other important changes, the demographic makeup of households renting in the private market seems to have changed, as it is “increasingly similar to those in home ownership”.

It also recognises that those in the rental market experience among the “most severe” housing difficulties.