A new ESRI report shows average private rents went up from €589 per month to €1,084 by 2021.
It's led to a major drop in the affordability of housing for young and low-income private renters.
Economic and Social Research Institute Economist Barra Roantree says rising rents are down to a lack of supply:
"What's driving these rising rents is an inadequate amount of supply. We just aren't building enough houses for the population growth. We need to be building something like 50,000 houses a year and we need to have been doing that for the past decade. So really, these kinds of affordability problems in the rental market are going to remain as long as we don't don't build sufficient housing, so there's a real need to ramp up the amount of housing which is being supplied."
