REMEMBER A FEW months back, in the lead up to the passing of the Residential Tenancies Bill, which essentially allowed landlords to reset rents at market rates rather than the 2% they’d been beholden to before, as long as the property was vacant?

You remember! Around the time that activists, opposition politicians, experts, and the public at large all warned that this idea would inevitably lead to a spike in evictions, because how could it not, if landlords can now make more money by evicting people (while also charging higher rents going forward)?

And you remember too that the government listened to this logic, thought about it, and said “Whatever, man”, and did it anyway? Well, in entirely unrelated news, it was announced this week that evictions had increased by 51% year-on-year for the first three months of 2026.

You might think that in a country with a housing crisis as severe as Ireland’s that this would trigger some sort of reflection amongst our top decision-makers, but Taoiseach Micheál Martin this week confirmed that he’s feeling very comfortable about his status as leader of both his party and his country.

In the context of potential leadership challenges faced by his UK counterpart Keir Starmer, Martin was asked this week about whether his own leadership style had stagnated after 15 years as Fianna Fáil’s top man. Martin rebuffed the question and countered that his leadership style was always evolving, and that he was “not going to fight the next election now”.

“We formed the government 16 months ago”, Martin told broadcaster Gavan Reilly. “We said we would deal with housing, we said we would deal with infrastructure, we said we would deal with disability. We said we would deal with child poverty. Let’s get on and deal with it.” Is it just me, or does he sort of sound like he wishes his party hadn’t said those things?

What’s so great about his choice of words is that he doesn’t actually even imply anything good is going to happen. We’re not going to solve housing, we’re just going to deal with it. We’re not going to end child poverty, we’re going to deal with it. We’re going to increase evictions by 51%, and you’re going to deal........

© TheJournal