Irish here, I'm 28, have a government job and live in my granny's box room. I make too much to apply for social housing but I can't afford rent for even the smallest of apartments. It's all so very tiresome.

In 2009 I was 21 and living in a house share with my mates. There was a huge recession at the time, none of us had jobs, but still could afford rent easily with money to spare. Nowadays 70% of people in their 20s/30s are living at home with their parents, despite having good jobs. Disgraceful. Young people have really been failed by our government. I don't know how they can show their faces in public. Greed caused this. Allowing vulture funds to go ahead, driving up the rent.

Putting the phrase "highest GDP" and "wages haven't grown/lagging behind" in subsequent sentences shows how ridiculous GDP as a metric (for Ireland) is in the first place.

28 from Ireland here. It's bleak. Buying a house is just a dream for most working people. Rent, taxes, and high prices eat away at your wages. Social and entertainment amenities are closing because of high insurance. The healthcare system is a joke. GDP figures have no relation to the actual domestic economy. Majority of people my age that I know have either already left for Australia, or are seriously considering it.

I was in Dublin recently and I saw so many homeless. I was quite suprised

Say it with me again: "GDP is a useless measure of Ireland's economy: use GNI at least or, better yet, modified GNI, which is an even more conservative and realistic measurement of the Irish economy"

I moved to Dublin in October 2023 and had to leave it after 50 days. It’s impossible to find a room, let alone an entire house/apartment. I ended up in slum apartments 😢

I've seen flats in Westport for not much less than London. It's insane.

I’m 42, I watched the economy crash, I’ve lived through debilitating employment uncertainty and wage stagnation. I’ve watched house prices ticking up by the day. I’ve watched FG/FG swerve round the most patent contempt for the population. I am watching those among my generation still adrift slip into hopelessness and nihilism. Right now, I’ve spent years accumulating a fortune (to me) towards a house deposit but every day my dream of a stable and respectable home slip further out of reach. The schemes that exist which I am practically expert on only help those who don’t need help. We are in 2007 again. Two speed economy, massive affordability problems and social problems on the rise. If the government of the day hadn’t allowed the construction sector to burn to the ground, they could have begun rebuilding the social housing stock that was badly needed at the end of the boom. It would have solved two shameful problems.

The problem is always the same: when houses become an investment and corporations are allowed to own and speculate on them, problems begin.

Dublin man here. Approved for a mortgage before the pandi. During the lockdown i was out of work so that fell through. Fair enough. House prices doubled making it impossible for my family to even consider buying. We're emigrating. I've lost faith and it broke my heart.

Whenever I hear people call Ireland the richest country in the world I laugh

The Irish GDP "miracle" is a problem by itself

the real issue is rather simple and never addressed. there is a straight up lack of housing and space in cities. most buildings are single families houses or at most 5 story apartments which is really inefficient so the prices within the cities get really high as each property has a higher share of land cost. Also there is a shortage of builders

Living in Ireland. And can confirm this is a very good video.

The “anti immigrant“ movement you mention is specifically about bad government policy regarding housing, its all part of the same issue. To invite lots of people in when you already have a housing crisis adds insult to injury and sends the signal that the government thats supposed to represent you actually resents you and would rather look after people from other countries. Thats why there is an anti immigrant sentiment.

After the 2008 bubble burst, the Irish government took vast amounts of property (complete or under construction) into state ownership. The entity was the National Assets Management Agency, or NAMA. It would have been quite clever for NAMA to have kept all the housing for use by the citizens who were paying and still are paying for it through higher taxation and levies. It was all sold off at knock-down prices. Genius or what?

One major issue is the fact that it is remarkably easy to block planning permission for new housing developments. A recent example is a Pub blocking a new social/affordable housing development in Dublin because it would adversely impact the view on their back garden. NIMBYism is pervasive, which makes dealing with the supply side very difficult.

I don’t live in Dublin anymore and my parents sold our house a bit before COVID, and it’s gone up hundreds of thousands since 😂

I'm usually proud to say I'm Irish but there's absolute nothing these days our country does right for our citizens anymore. Horrible housing prospects, no infrastructure outside of Dublin, a dumping ground for multinational corporations who want to avoid paying as little tax as possible and a completely gutted hotel and tourism industry for the sake of taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees who will never have anywhere to live.

None of Sinn Fein's policies will solve the housing problems. Not to mention, if you look at where every political party stands on the issue, they are all "promising" the same thing. The simple solution is to build more houses, then build more after that. Ultimately tho that will hurt the NIMBY's among us who block planning or those that have "invested" and expect their investment to endlessly rise in value. On Planning. Serious investment is needed in the Electrical, Water, sewage, road infrastructure and public transport as they are the biggest hurdle blocking planning. Pumping stations and treatment works are more often than not at max and not being upgraded fast enough for the few projects that are going ahead. Electrical connections have a 2 year or greater wait for new projects due to the number of zombie projects ahead of them mostly from the "green revolution". Getting the funding to upgrade the grid and resolving these delays and the admin associated would go a long way to speeding things along. Even if they want to build more who is actually going to build? Ironically the anti immigration is hurting house builders and the first jobs to go are always in the building trade. Inflation has hurt building badly. The price of Timber for example has more than doubled over the last 2 years. At one point quotes given 4weeks+ were being revised and not honoured due to how rapidly prices were increasing. Lastly public transport. There is no point building new houses if your commute is 2hours+. A novel Solution would be upgrading the rail between Belfast and Dublin. Electronification, better signalling, removing the "temporary" speed restrictions with the aim of getting journey times below an hour opens up Northern Ireland and their relatively affordable housing. That includes areas like Belfast, Lisburn, Portadown, Lurgan, Newry as places to live. Improving the lines towards Limerick, Cork, Wicklow and Galway would also go a long way. Ultimately training people in all the building and engineering skills required then getting the money to invest in supporting infrastructure and building more houses as and when possible. This isn't a single term solution which is why no government wants to do the ground work to find their successor get voted in and take all the glory. They would rather come up with half baked schemes and throw a fist full of cash hoping this time something magical happens

I'd say the population increasing by about 100,000 people in a single year and over 1.3 million people over 20 years has not helped. In the 20 years prior to that it went up by 400k, this is a 3x increase and its only climbing. Assuming 2 people live in a single residence and this continues (and does not go up which is what the trend line says it will, and fast) then what's that, 961 new places to rent or buy A WEEK? - not likely. Other counties have these horrible things called blocks of flats and can cope, i'v been to ireland and although unspoilt and beautiful it might need a bit of a rethink

TLDR: "IMMIGRATION PLAYS ABSOLUTELY NO PART IN THIS!!!!!!!!!" When you have to give up every other reason except for immigration as if it does not play a part~

A big issue is lack of infrastructure. There are no trains or trams in Ireland outside Dublin. None of those fancy underground trains either. All the jobs are in Dublin because its the only place with the infrastructure. Because its where the government is. So thats where all the houses are. But one small city can't hold 6m people.

The fact that the entire developed world has a housing crisis makes you wonder what is truely causing it and why it can't or wont be solved.

I’m just here for the “It’s the same in my xxx country” comments.

The housing crisis in Ireland has been bad for a long time. I did a semester abroad in Galway in 2016 - something like 10% of the student body at NUIG was international students, 2,000 out of 20,000 or something like that. Each and every one of them were scrambling to find housing and the landlords were making a killing off of it. One of the landlords asked a student I met for 1500 euros a month when his previous tenants were paying 1000 and that was eight years ago. I myself ended up staying the entire semester in a hostel in the city because I couldn't afford anything else.

The large population increase over the last decade should also have been noted

Welcome to the new host. Nice to see that channel is growing.

There just hasn't been much of ANY building at all in Ireland. Not just social housing, but even ordinary housing. Good reporting. The foreign "investors" are a serious issue and really, Irleand as a decade of house building to catch up on!

Ireland has one of the most centralised governments in the world. Other countries have housing policies at the subnational level so that constituencies can react without the involvement of the national gov, but all housing decisions in ireland go through one agency

I'm 20, and I'm scared for my future here in ireland. I don't want to leave my country my whole family is here

In my opinion, a housing market crash is imminent due to the high number of individuals who purchased homes above the asking price despite the low interest rates. These buyers find themselves in precarious situations as housing prices decline, leaving them without any equity. If they become unable to afford their homes, foreclosure becomes a likely outcome. Even attempting to sell would not yield any profits. This scenario is expected to impact a significant number of people, particularly in light of the anticipated surge in layoffs and the rapid increase in the cost of living.

There are so many errors in this video. It's not true that landlords can evict tenants "without having to give a reason". Well, it's only true in the first 6 months of a tenancy. After the first 6 months a tenancy becomes indefinite by default (called a Part IV tenancy) and a landlord can only terminate based on a limited number of grounds (sale, needs property for own use or that of family member, substantial refurbishment, tenant isn't paying rent, etc). The vast majority of "institutional investors" are actually councils and social housing non-profits like Cluid and Peter McVerry. The right to buy social homes was introduced in the 1930s in Ireland, it's not an 1980s innovation like in Britain.

Unchecked immigration combined with a lack of accompanying infrastructure investment. Its not complicated, and Ireland was warned. Their politicians had too much personal money invested in property though.

If you think Ireland's housing crisis is bad here in Australia it is significantly worse with a rental vacancy rate of just 1.3% compared to Ireland's 4%. Yet the Irony is that so many people from Europe come here not realising how bad it is.

A correction to your video, Landlords in Ireland do have to give a reason for eviction. And ending tenancies can be lengthy and complicated

The Irish state has got its self in the position where it attempts to house, feed, provide healthcare and educate including 3rd level for anyone who comes. Which people have and still continue to come. It is not a housing crisis but sadly an overpopulation one. This will be very difficult to deal with and I do not believe there are any easy answers. Our roads, hospitals, doctors surgeries, schools even hotels are severely congested. Impossible to predict 25 years ago.

The video seemed to have a left-wing slant rather than the unbiased reporting for which we expect from TLDR. 1) Their GDP figure for Ireland is warped by shell companies utilising the very low corporation tax rate. An Irish based business will pay tax on its revenue, but employ local people, own business premises, have utilities, pay road, tolls, etc, so the economy also enjoys the untaxed profits. 2) Ireland opened its doors to immigration, so its population rose from 3.8m inb 2000 to 5.1m now - a whopping rise of 34% (The UK rose 17% and France 11% for comparison). It is without doubt the biggest reason for the crisis ahead of poor planning and governance. 3) The investor-led building programmes reduced the availability of homes to buy, but not homes to occupy - eg rent - and incentivised the investment to build them. 4) Your figures at 3.27 run from 2012 when Ireland's market was at its nadir rather than say 2000 or perhaps the last 5 years. 5) Many governments have moved away from social housing, as governments spend more per property than the private sector; the quality is usually worse; they isolate the poor on to housing estates instead of mixing them with society creating stigma; and the inefficiency of councils mean they spend more on maintenance while providing lower quality homes. Hence, it is better for housing to be built and managed by the private sector. 6) The right to buy scheme does not reduce housing stock, as it simply transfers ownership. 7) Development of Ireland continues to focus on Dublin with around 25% of its population living in the city or commuting suburbs. Its solutions may be to identify another city and push developers to build there with perhaps lower taxes and reduced planning while capping planning in Dublin.

The only factor that drives increases in rent is demand, and demand is driven by population. As the supply of rentable units decreases the cost to rent available units goes up. Increases in population via immigration of course drives rent prices higher.

At 2:25 it's Estonia and Lithuania as far as I can tell not Estonia and Latvia..

Funny how housing is the only industry where supply and demand principle doesn't apply. Almost like a supernatural anomaly.

With thousands of immigrants arriving monthly into Ireland, why is there a discussion on the reason for the housing crisis?

I study in Dublin and I can confirm this really does affect people on the ground

It's not just that the Irish "feel" immigrants are putting pressure on the housing market, immigrants are indeed putting upward pressure on prices. The primary cause is undeniably bad government policy, but it's bad government policy all across the board.

Two big points you’ve missed here. #1 is that after the 2008 crash, the central bank mandated mortgages of no more than 3.5x someone’s income (or a couple). #2, despite the fact that many many many people’s rent are higher if not double what they’d pay for a mortgage, banks don’t allow what you’re paying in rent to be counted towards your ‘ability to pay’. So this means lots of people are stuck in a situation where they could more than afford a mortgage (which would be collateralised by the house), but they can’t. And as a double whammy, they often will look at your disposable income (after paying this high rent) when they ‘stress test’ the payments. I know so many people here in this situation. Most just emigrate at this stage :/

Guys these prices are high only for people who do the things right and pay taxes. But if you're an illegal immigrant you can get houses for free. So, remember be a criminal and you'll get houses and money for free! What a great country!

In the Netherlands houses cost about the same. You cannot get a house for the asking price. You would have to overbid by over 10%, usually about 20% to get the house

There reasons are: The Banks won't lend for housebuilding after the financial crash. Inflation has made construction very expensive. Caps on building heights reduces supply. Very bad planning including restricting "urban sprawl", which just means restricting house building. And there's probably 2 or 3 more reasons i can't think of.

The slow planning system is honestly the main issue. institutional investors were more or less necessary in the early to mid 2010s due to the austerity we had to undergo to get our borrowing rates down after the Celtic tiger crashed.

14,000 homelesss in Ireland now.. and growing. This Gov needs to go. Majority of politicians are landlords who dont want to see rent prices decrease.

This video glossed over the most important variable here: HOUSING SUPPLY. Institutional investors get into the housing market BECAUSE of scarcity, they are symptoms, not the root cause. The whole point of an asset bubble is that it's scarce enough to ensure never-ending growth for the investors, the way you pop said bubble is through more supply, in other words: BUILD MORE HOUSING. The housing crises in the English-speaking world, whether it's the U.S/UK/Ireland/Canada/Australia/ New Zealand all have the same general root cause: inadequate home construction to population growth. For example: if 10,000 people are looking for a home and only 6,000 homes are available (and we're assuming only one person per home), then no matter what you do, unless you build 4,000 more homes (ideally a slight surplus) you'll always have a housing crisis, no matter how many subsidies you give to renters or rent control. This is like discussing wildfires without talking about hosing the flames. I'm quite disappointed in the coverage here

Also keep in mind most Irish politicians are home owners themselves who don't wanna fix the problem because it's making them money...

I'm from Cork, lived in Dublin for 5 years. Left Ireland a year ago and must say it's the best decision I've made. Will be nice to visit of course but doubt I'll ever live in Ireland again

The Irish gdp is a fake gdp. It is just a showing the amount of money that flows outside of EU to tax havens almost taxfree.

Ireland has a pathological relationship with property from its post colonial experience. The wealth increase over the last 20 years has exacerbated this, making these issues worse. Unregulated one-off housing in the countryside is disgusting. I'm in my mid thirties and stuck around after 2008, unlike a lot of people I knew. I've given up on the place now and have left. The ruling class of FFFG and their supporters should be ashamed of themselves. They never face consequences, they are content to have young people be raised like cattle for export. And don't get me started on the livestock industry...

Australia: "YAY! We're misery buddies!"

Dub here. We are unwilling to build high-density housing and a proper transportation infrastructure to support this. At best the government only offers demand-side solutions like help to buy, which only further increase prices through enabling people to spend more. Supply-side solutions are non-existent.

how many empty houses there are in Ireland? if there are few and not many empty houses then it means people are able to pay the rents, if they weren't able to pay the high rents, landords will drop the price. There are people with low income who still want to be able to live as their parents, in the same city, close to the center. You cannot have that, more successful people took your place. People who harder and dont wait for the government to give them a cheap but comfortable life.

6:03 the graph shown is for increasing housing applications whilst talking about decreasing affordable house building... both are probably good points to make but showing showing them simultaneously confuses the message. Otherwise good video well enunciated.

“No fault eviction” is a misnomer. In Ireland Landlords can only evict for sale, substantial renovation, or for personal use. Blaming funds is not entirely accurate either. Without BTR apartments the rental crisis would be much worse, and those apartment blocks were built specifically for funds to rent out. You failed to address the huge oversupply at the 2008 crash, the financial crisis afterwards, and mass emigration of construction workers.

A couple of years ago I moved to Ireland from England. I had a great impression of Ireland. So when I moved to somewhere outside Mullingar I was absolutely stunned by just how bad the services were. Health service in crisis, when I go to work I see so many homeless in Dublin, pretty much no public transport outside of the capital, terrible road surfaces and a national broadcaster that is just embarrassing. It is actually tragic because most Irish people want to work hard and want to build a great country. It is shame that the political leaders don't care about them.

Even cars are expensive over here because we have a vehicle registration tax. Not to mention tolls on roads which we pay income tax and a separate road tax on. This country has every imaginable tax yet none of the benefits of comparable European countries.

this seems to the problem in Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Countries that "on paper" should have plenty of land for their population but because there is so much concentrated wealth in their largest cities (Dublin, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver among others, all ranking very high in the wealthiest cities per capita in the world), it makes the demand and the ability to spend money on bolstering that demand extremely high causing housing prices in those cities especially to increase exponentially.

Could you do a video on the housing crisis in Estonia aswell? Seeing Estonia on the top of the rent chart peeked my interest.

Im a school teacher and my wife an accountant . We left ireland because it would take way too much sacrificing to make our life in Dublin work. Now we are abroad earning 30% more, houses half the price and taxed significantly less. They have made a sad situation out of Dublin.

I made about 50k a year but still wasn't able to properly take care of my family of 4. I was prepared to commute anywhere..

I swear, in almost every country with housing issues, the story is 90% like this: landlords buy out houses, inflate prices so much no one can buy/rent them and the market crashes. Not just in Europe, but in the US as well from what I know.

I am from Canada, specifically Toronto. We’ve played the blame game with investors, it didn’t work. It’s zoning here, and a chronic lack of it being built. Maybe that’s an issue in Ireland too?

No wonder young irish people are leaving. I myself plan to get out one day, when the government priority is to house asylum seekers over its own and including the homeless...that says it all

Banks will only lend 3 times your income, so this excludes most private sector workers, also building standards have risen making construction much more expensive

Please do a video on the Danish housing crisis. As Denmark created strict immigration laws it actually shows that exponentially rising housing prices also happen there, possibly.

ngl, I chucked at 6:22, as it is indeed bad Government policies. I feel like another major problem with the housing crisis is the Rural/Urban divide in the country (especially when it comes to the Green Party), something that I do hope TLDR does a video on in the future.

Ireland is so deceiving as the gdp and gdp per capita is so high but the country as a whole is not very well off

Irish-American here, left for America in 2015, in the height of the housing crisis. Things aren’t much greater here, but were far better than when I lived in Ireland

I love this new presenter, she has clear voice and is very easy to understand!

Average wages shouldn’t be used in any calculations. €48k is not indicative of what most people earn here.

2/3 "reasons" are objectively wrong. Dublin has had a growing number of households and close to zero housing supply growth, it is likely the supply has decreased as locals combined units or converted them into office space. When in a housing shortage any additional wages are simply captured by existing land owners. Institutional investors converting owner occupied homes to rentals does not increase to society wise cost of housing. Someone will still be living in that unit as a renter. The institutional investors may or may not be the source of capital finding any new supply being produced. Absent that capital, would those homes be constructed?

I will never forgive Varadikar and the Goverment for what they have done to the Irish People and our Country .

Kudos for the new host, so charming and well-prepared, perfect voice for the microphone!

Pretty uncritical of SF. Rent freezes seem to be a bad idea in the long term for example

You lost a lot of credence with me with the dismissal of immigration as a factor in the housing crisis, and blaming it on government policy. The fact is housing is an issue is almost every developed nation. If it is close to a universal issue, Unlikely any government policy will address the situation entirely. Not absolving government policy, just a blithe nebulous statement it's the fault of government policy is uninformed at best.

Congrats for the new hire :D

Why is there a housing crisis? Answer. The people elected to solve it are landlords.

I'm surprised they didn't mention restrictions on new supply of housing. New developments are frequently blocked.

Errrr... Portugal. The housing situation is insane, particularly in Lisbon.

It's the same everywhere in Europe. I'm planning to leave the Netherlands forever (I'm an English speaker of mixed origin, 27 yo), and Ireland is one the countries I consider to move in. The housing never scares me. It's even worse in the Netherlands, especially, in big cities😂 I live in a SMALL town, and still pay 700 euros for a STUDIO (1/3 of my monthly income). Paying 1000 euros or more for the same studio in Dublin is not really bad, because Dublin is a big and influential city, and you can earn more there. And, at least, Ireland has more lands to build houses. The Netherlands doesn't.

Rory Hearne’s book “Gaffs” on the topic is a great insight and read into the housing crisis what caused it, why it’s still ongoing and what can be done including examples of how these action plans have been implemented and worked elsewhere including many parts of Europe The reality is frustrating and depressing but the more we know the more we can pressure and complain to our TD’s about actually addressing the issue when we have facts figures and data as rebuttal of their typical smokes and Mirrors Fine Gael and the coalition have fed us over last 20 years

There are great value low priced houses in Ireland just most of them have very low employment options or good transport links etc so only suitable for those who are retired or who can work remotely.

Need more balance in this video. Mentioned that people ignore pricing regulations, as if rent limits are a good solution. They are not.

I live in donegal and we have a housong crisis with Mica faulty homes added.into the mix. The GPD is a load of nonsense. Its called leprechaun economics. There simply isnt enough housing and what is out there is normally awful. Renting a home if you can get one usually involves doing a forensic level clean. Rental.houses are generally dirty and in disrepair, notjing is enforced in land lords at all.

But the gdp keeps rising! Surely it will trickle down to us?? Right lads?!? Any minute now!

"aside from carpet bombing, rent control is the best way to leave a city in ruins" I am thoroughly confused - how can you both demonization investors that create rental apartments, and at the same breath talk about how the death of housing development. If there is so much unsubsidized money going into the system, and not enough housing being built to capture all that extra investment - something on the building policy (and rental) that is driving up housing costs. Unfortunately, you completely missed the opportunity to look into this odd situation, and just blame "investors" as the usual boogie man.

One of the biggest factors this video overlooks is that unlike most developed countries in Europe like Germany or England, Ireland's industry and 70% of its economy is centralised around Dublin city rather than being dispersed around other regions and urban centres which in turn means that Dublin is responsible for most of Ireland's employment which creates massive accommodation demand in Dublin and the surrounding commuter belt which drives up rent and house prices. Another issue that isn't mentioned here is that unlike most other developed countries around the world, Ireland is one of the few with a historical reluctance to develop highrise buildings but instead has a tendency to build outwards rather than upwards, which in turn massively increases the price of land real estate compared to other countries that build upwards in urban centres and this is becoming even more of an issue as Ireland's population growth massively increases

Despite Sinn Féin being Republican they’re actually the most left wing major party Ireland has. All other left wing parties are too small to actually take control of government

shes great!! calm professional easy-to-follow voice would love to hear her in more videos!

Sinn Fein have still not ruled out a full ban on institutional investors on property in Ireland, which needs to happen now. We also need to seriously restructure planning objections, as right now it’s far to easy for one person to object to building an apartment that will home 60-70 people

There are many laws for hindering landlords from charging too much or increasing the rent more than they should, but the problem is you need to take them to the RTB and it takes very long for a hearing. It’s ridiculous

0:27 Only 10% of EU claiming housing to be a key issue??? LOOOL, that stat is wrong badly... Have you guys seen your comment section lately? specially the babies topic?

Same reason why all of Europe has a housing crisis. Uncontrolled migration.