The Irish Independent’s View: Beware unintended consequences of rental reforms

Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar illustrates the laws of unintended consequences in his book. Photo: Reuters

The laws of unintended consequences dictate that the actions taken by economic decision-makers with a specific objective in mind can lead to unexpected outcomes. In other words, economic policies used by the Government in order to achieve economic objectives may have unexpected outcomes along with the intended ones. Of course, the unintended effects can often be negative.

In politics, there is always a danger of a seemingly popular decision having knock-on drawbacks. In his memoir, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar explained how the eviction ban of the winter of 2022 came about.

“At the end of October, the g

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