Why is car hire cost gone through the roof?

[wordlehurdle]

Looking at booking a car in August for 16 days the smallest car is over €1000 !,
I've never paid anywhere near that before just wondering if it will get worse or should I just book and take a cancellation option?

It’s not just in Ireland. The cost of cars has gone through the roof across the board due to parts manufacturing. Massive demand on hire vehicles too, as people avoid public transport. I work in construction and gangs that traditionally shared a van and using individual vehicles. I was in a toad accident last week. It took the insurance’s hire company 6 days to find me a replacement car of any type at all.

We've found this - 18 days car hire to France at the beginning of July - £1100!

So bad can only harm tourism . West of Ireland relies on this.
I probably won't go ( unless I come into some money!)

@wordlehurdle I'd advise to book now with free cancellation as car hire seems to increase every week.i've booked for next month and the price has already increased.
On a side note I don't think Ireland is going to lose its 'RIP Off Ireland' tag anytime soon.

I'm going to drive over although the ferry was 500 £ will need a hotel because if the long distance and petrol will also be expensive.
I'm going to leave the car there for the next 4 months and then take it back.
I can manage here without a car but seems crazily expensive there .

It's not just Ireland. It's because all the car hire companies sold their stock when Covid hit and there's a shortage of new cars because of a lack of semi-conductors.

Apparently a lot of car hire companies had to sell off a lot of their cars during various lockdowns etc so there are much more limited availability which has contributed to price rises.

People are going up to Belfast after arriving in to Dublin airport to rent a car apparently.
I think there's price gouging, I am ashamed to say.
The government supported many businesses who suffered during Covid and this is how they repay those taxpayers - with exorbitant prices.
A relative rented a lovely car in a European city lately for half nothing compared with Irish prices.

I was looking at hire cars yesterday. We're coming over to Mayo for a few days to attend a wedding in November and the price even then in the winter is very high. It was never like this on previous visits. Think we'll be relying on lifts this time round!

It's a shortage of cars. We were given a really high price for Italy recently. One thing that did bring the price down was to book it through the airline rather than direct with the car hire company. Manage to save about 25% doing that.