People still type “rent pressure zone calculator” into Google several hundred times a month, and the answer they get is usually a page written for 2019. Here is the short version for 2026: the zones did their job, then swallowed the country, then were replaced by one national rule. What follows is the history in a page, the rule as it stands now, and the two situations where the old zone dates still matter.
How the zones spread, 2016 to 2025
Rent Pressure Zones were created by the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016. From 24 December 2016 the four Dublin council areas and Cork City were designated, and inside a zone a rent could rise by no more than 4% a year. Designation followed a test: rents in the area had to be above the national average and rising by more than 7% a year in four of the previous six quarters.
Over the next eight years the map filled in by local electoral area. Galway City, Bray, Naas, Celbridge, Ashbourne and Wicklow came in January 2017; Maynooth in March and Drogheda and Greystones in September that year; Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, Navan, Dundalk, Athlone and a dozen more in 2019; the rest of Kildare and the county towns of Laois, Offaly, Westmeath and Kerry in 2020; Ennis, Westport, Shannon, Sligo and the rest of Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Kilkenny counties between 2023 and early 2025. The cap changed underneath them: from 16 July 2021 it became the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices instead of 4%, and from 11 December 2021 the lower of HICP and 2% a year.
The last 54 areas, most of Mayo, Donegal, Kerry, Clare, Tipperary, Wexford, Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon and parts of Cork, Laois, Offaly, Carlow and Sligo, were designated together on 20 June 2025 by the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2025. From that day the whole State was a Rent Pressure Zone.
What replaced them on 1 March 2026
The same 2025 Act, brought into force in stages, took the word “zone” out of the rent rules. Since 1 March 2026 section 19(4) of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 applies to every private tenancy in the State: the rent may be reviewed once in 12 months, and may not rise by more than 2% a year pro rata or the change in the Consumer Price Index since it was last set, whichever is lower. The index changed from HICP to the CSO’s All Items CPI. Market rent remains the ceiling under section 19(1), and every Notice of Rent Review has to cite three comparable tenancies from the public Rent Register to prove it.
Three things are new rather than renamed. The cap now follows the home between tenancies: a new tenant pays the old rent plus the cap unless one of the exceptions in section 19(5) applies (two years empty, the last tenant left by their own notice, the landlord ended the tenancy for breach or unsuitability with that ground on the notice, or a substantial change to the home). Tenancies created from 1 March 2026 get a reset to market rent after six lawful years, so the first of those arrives in March 2032. And apartments in developments begun on or after 10 June 2025 follow inflation alone, without the 2% ceiling. The RTB’s page on setting and reviewing private rents has the official summary.
Where the old zone dates still matter
Checking an increase that took effect before March 2026. An increase is judged by the rule in force in that area on that day. In Swords, designated on 24 December 2016, a 2018 increase was capped at 4% a year; in Castlebar, designated on 15 May 2025, a 2018 increase had no percentage cap at all, only the market rent ceiling and a 24-month gap between reviews. A tenant reclaiming an overpayment, or a landlord defending one, has to know the date. Each of our rent prices pages shows it for the local electoral area.
The first review for some older tenancies. In the 54 areas designated on 20 June 2025, a tenancy that already existed and whose rent was set before that date can be reviewed for the first time 24 months after the rent was last set, not 12 (section 20B(1) keeps the old section 24C alive for them). A rent set in Ballina in January 2025 cannot be reviewed before January 2027. Tenancies created on or after 1 March 2026 are on the 12-month cycle everywhere.
What this means in practice
For a landlord: stop looking for a zone map. Work out the date the rent was last set, run the two figures through the RTB calculator or ours, and pick three registered comparables that support the number. If the register shows similar homes letting for less than your cap allows, the market figure is the one that counts.
For a tenant: an increase above 2% a year since the last setting is almost always unlawful now, whatever the town. The exceptions are narrow and each needs a Notice of Exemption filed with the RTB within a month; ask to see it. If the increase is older, find your area’s designation date before deciding whether you were overcharged. Our rent check does both against the register.