Jacqueline Waeber's introduction to the Dublin rental market featured a line-up of slimy creatures, fungus and gruesome decor. She never fails to be surprised by the lack of attention paid by Irish landlords to their rental properties.

On one occasion she encountered a procession of slugs in the kitchen of a place in Belgrave Square, Rathmines. After a marathon trawl she eventually found a place to rent but returned from a four-week holiday to find it covered in mould. In her native Switzerland she says "landlords who allow such places to be rented would be prosecuted".

This time around she decided to let Home Locators do the dirty work and find her a suitable place. Like many tenants in the current market, she expects high standards. Her preference was for a new let which was "not stained and dirty where people have been before".

A music lecturer in Trinity, she needed space to store her books and was looking for somewhere "well presented with not too much furniture. I like minimalist, not kitsch, or fussy decoration with coffee tables stuck in odd places."

She also needed a second bedroom with a fold-down bed so she can use it as an office. She says Home Locators found her the perfect place, a two-bed house with a small garden for €1,500, which she will move into soon.

Her current flat, a one-bed apartment on Baggot Street, costs €1,000, and was also a first-time let when she moved in.

She says Switzerland, and in particular Zurich and Geneva, have a reputation for being expensive "but are ridiculously cheap in comparison to Dublin. You can get a very good two-bed apartment there for €1,000."

Gina is a lone parent living in the private rented sector. Finding the two-bed house she currently lives in involved "a whole lot of begging".

The €937 a month social welfare supplement she receives makes it difficult to find anything larger than a one-bedroom flat for her and her 11-year-old son. Eventually she found a sympathetic landlord and a "really lovely" two-bed house which she rents for €1,000 a month.

Ironically, the high standard of this accommodation has made it more difficult to get a property on Dublin City Council's housing list. She has been on the list since 1998 and says that if she lived in cramped conditions, she would be a priority. She tried living in a one-bed with her son before but says she couldn't cope: "I had to get out."

Her efforts to return to the workforce have also backfired financially. Although paid an allowance for participating in a 20-hour a week back-to-work scheme, her rental allowance has been reduced from €937 to €520, leaving her a grand total of €30 a week to play with.