Dublin City Council Hikes Rent for Tenants with support of Greens and Labour

Stiofán Mac an tSionnaigh

At their most recent council meeting, Dublin City Council approved its annual budget for 2026.

The vote was tight – 31 councillors voted for the motion, while 30 councillors opposed it.

What was at issue were the measures in relation to social housing, namely, that the council intends to raise rents for all council tenants in the new year.

The city council has said that the rent increase is needed to cover a €55 million funding gap for social housing maintenance.

However, the move will see some council tenants seeing an increase in their rent of up to 50%. Many tenants who are due to be affected by this rent hike were present at a protest held by CATU outside DCC while the vote was taking place.

While councillors voted in favour of rent increases for working class council tenants, they voted against a motion that would instead see the gap covered by an increase in commercial rates.

This motion would have raised rates by 15% and covered the projected gap, while still excluding 97.5% of businesses due to exemptions - the best of both worlds it seems. People Before Profit, who proposed the motion, said that these measures have already worked in Dún Laoighaire-Rathdown and Limerick.

While the usual suspects of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were in favour of the rent hike, they were supported in this by both Labour and the Greens.

Green Party councillor Janet Horner was vehement in her support for the rent increases, going so far as to call the councillors voting against it and presenting alternatives that would instead see capital footing the bill for the funding gap, “cheap and manipulative”.

It should be remembered that only last month, both Labour and the Green Party were positioning themselves within a so-called “Left Alliance” that supported Catherine Connolly’s presidential campaign. Monday’s vote, only a month after her victory, puts paid to that lie.

This move is just the latest in the almost inexhaustible evidence sheet of the absolute contempt in which both Labour and the Greens hold the working class. When presented with a choice between representing the interests of the working class or those of the bourgeoisie, they made the same decision that they have always made - protecting and promoting the interests of capital.

But why should we be surprised? Both parties have demonstrated with their legacies in government – Labour with Fine Gael and the Greens with Fianna Fáil – that they are bourgeois parties, and will push for policies which attack the working class with the same gusto as the bluest of blushirts.

The decision taken by Labour and Green Party councillors in Dublin’s City Hall on Monday night is just the latest evidence of a simple truth: these parties have never, will never, and can never be parties of the working class.