'Exorbitant' average rent in Cork city tops €2,210

The average monthly rent in Cork city has reached €2,213, according to the latest report from property website Daft.ie, a level which has been described as “shocking” and “unaffordable” by the city’s opposition politicians.

The report for the first quarter of this year discloses that the average rent in the city is up by 13.6% in the last year, second only to Limerick where the year-on-year increase was more than 20%.

The average rent in Cork city is more than €150 higher than the nationwide average of €2,053.

In the rest of Cork, market rents were on average 10% higher in the first quarter of 2025 than a year previously.

The average listed rent is now €1,621, up 56% from the level prevailing when the covid pandemic occurred.

Report author Ronan Lyons said the sustained increases in rents in the open market were being driven by an “acute and worsening shortage of rental housing” and suggested that rent controls such as rent pressure zones were having a negative impact.

“Unfortunately, changes made to rent controls in 2021 dramatically reduced the ability of Ireland’s rental sector to attract the capital needed for new supply, the ultimate remedy for the shortage,” he said.

“The opportunity exists for the Government to reform those controls and facilitate the emergence of a new pipeline of rental homes.

“Nonetheless, further s will be needed to encourage new rental supply outside of the Greater Dublin Area.”

Cork North Central Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould described the rents being charged as “exorbitant” and “unaffordable” for most families.

“Sinn Féin would bring in a rent freeze for the next three years,” he said.

Cork South Central Social Democrats TD Pádraig Rice suggested that a “radical reset” of the housing policy was needed and had been recommended by the Housing Commission.

“These figures are yet another reminder of how unaffordable rents in Cork have become.”

The Social Democrats TD suggested that “far more cost rental and not-for-profit housing options” were needed, as well as better regulation of the private market.

“Too many people in Cork are homeless,” he said.

“Too many people”, he said, cannot afford such high rents “and too many people have been blocked from ever owning a home of their own. We need change.”

Cork Labour Party senator Laura Harmon said she believed the Government to be “failing by every metric on housing, rising rents, out-of-reach house prices and devastating levels of homelessness”.

“A whole generation are locked out of home ownership and we can’t have a whole generation of pensioners renting in the future as it’s a ticking poverty time bomb,” she said.

“We must see action and ambition from this Government.”