Ireland’s housing crisis is not a recent development. The conditions that produced it, constrained supply, speculative land pricing, underinvestment in social housing, and a planning system that struggled to keep pace with population growth were built up over years and have proven resistant to the policy responses that successive governments have deployed since roughly 2015.
This article traces a decade of housing policy in Ireland. We track the plans that were announced, the targets that were set, the numbers that were actually delivered, and the groups of people who fell furthest between the cracks of each successive strategy. It is not a comfortable account. But understanding how we arrived at the present situation is a necessary foundation for evaluating what might, plausibly, work next.
The Starting Point: 2015 and the Post-Crash Landscape
In 2015, Ireland was still climbing out of the aftermath of the property crash. Construction had collapsed during the recession: at the peak of the bubble in 2006, Ireland was building over 90,000 units a year. By 2013, that figure had fallen to approximately 8,000. The infrastructure of the housebuilding sector, developers, contractors, subcontractors, architects had largely disintegrated.
Homelessness, which had been a relatively contained problem through even the recession years, began to spike from 2014 onwards. Economic recovery was generating employment and pushing people back into the rental market, but the supply of rental accommodation had not expanded to meet new demand. Rents began rising sharply in Dublin and other cities.
The Government’s first formal response was Social Housing Strategy 2020, published in November 2014, which promised 35,000 new social housing units by 2020. The strategy was followed in 2016 by Rebuilding Ireland, a more ambitious action plan that aimed to address both the social housing deficit and the broader supply crisis.
Rebuilding Ireland: What It Promised and What It Delivered
‘Rebuilding Ireland’, launched by then-Minister for Housing Simon Coveney in July 2016, was a action plan covering social housing, the rental sector, planning reform and the activation of vacant and derelict properties. At its core were ambitious numerical targets: 47,000 social housing units by 2021, a doubling of construction output, and the elimination of long-term homelessness by 2021.
The target for social housing was not met. Between 2016 and 2021, approximately 30,000 social housing solutions were delivered. A significant proportion of these were not newly built units. They included properties leased from private landlords (the Housing Assistance Payment scheme, or HAP), units acquired from receivers on behalf of local authorities, and some conversions of vacant properties. New-build social housing remained stubbornly below target throughout the plan’s lifetime.
HAP, the Housing Assistance Payment scheme, became one of the defining housing policy instruments of the period. Under HAP, local authorities pay private landlords directly on behalf of qualifying tenants, who top up the payment if their rent exceeds the HAP limit. By 2022, over 58,000 households were on HAP. The scheme provided immediate accommodation solutions but did not add a single unit of housing to the national stock and left recipients dependent on a private rental market where landlords could and frequently did, exit the scheme by selling properties or leaving the sector entirely.
At its peak, Ireland was producing over 90,000 homes a year. By 2013, that had collapsed to 8,000. Recovery has been slow, uneven and insufficient.
Planning and Land: The Structural Bottlenecks
Running through every housing strategy of the past decade is a common theme: planning delays and land costs. The planning process in Ireland, governed primarily by the Planning and Development Act 2000 and its amendments, allowed for multiple levels of appeal to local authorities, to An Bord Pleanála and to the courts that could extend the timeline for a large development by three to five years.
Land costs represent the other structural problem. Ireland does not have a functioning mechanism to ensure that land zoned for housing is used for that purpose at a price that makes affordable delivery viable. The Vacant Site Levy, introduced under Rebuilding Ireland, was designed to penalise landowners who sat on development land. In practice, it raised negligible revenue and influenced almost no development decisions.
The Land Development Agency (LDA), established in 2018 and placed on a statutory footing in 2021, was intended to act as a state body that could assemble land, provide infrastructure and deliver affordable homes on state and semi-state lands. By 2025, the LDA had several major projects at various stages of development, including Shanganagh in Dún Laoghaire and the former Central Mental Hospital site in Dundrum. But the scale of delivery has remained modest relative to the stated ambition, and the timelines have repeatedly slipped.
Housing for All: The Current Strategy
In September 2021, the Government, now a Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party coalition published Housing for All, replacing Rebuilding Ireland as the central housing strategy. The plan committed to the delivery of 300,000 homes between 2021 and 2030, with 90,000 of those to be social and affordable units.
The strategy introduced several new instruments. The Affordable Housing Fund provided capital subsidies to local authorities and approved housing bodies to reduce the cost of delivering homes below market price. The Cost Rental model under which rents are set at cost of delivery rather than market rate was formally introduced with Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) and the LDA designated as the primary delivery vehicles.
The First Home scheme, launched in 2022, is a shared equity model under which the State and participating banks co-invest in a home, reducing the deposit burden on first-time buyers. Take-up has been moderate, with the scheme most useful to buyers in higher price points which has prompted criticism that it effectively subsidises prices rather than increasing supply.
Overall housing output did recover during this period. In 2024, approximately 40,000 units were completed nationally. The highest figure since the pre-crash era and a significant improvement on the roughly 20,000 that were being delivered when Housing for All was published. Whether this reflects the strategy’s success or underlying demographic and economic drivers is contested among housing economists.
Who Got Left Behind
Across a decade of strategies several groups have consistently fallen between the stated ambitions of policy and the reality of delivery.
Homeless families and individuals represent the starkest failure. When Rebuilding Ireland promised to eliminate long-term homelessness by 2021, approximately 5,000 adults were recorded in emergency accommodation. By mid-2025, that figure had risen to over 14,000 adults, including more than 4,000 children in families in emergency accommodation. The most recent figures from Focus Ireland and the Department of Housing show a homelessness crisis that has worsened in absolute terms through the period of the most active housing policy intervention in the State’s history.
Low-income renters who do not qualify for social housing but cannot save for a deposit have occupied an increasingly precarious middle ground. Rent Pressure Zones, introduced in 2016 and repeatedly modified — limited rent increases in designated areas to 4% per year. In practice, enforcement was inconsistent, exemptions proliferated, and the measure did not prevent rents in Dublin from doubling between 2012 and 2024.
Rural communities have experienced a different version of the crisis: not always unaffordable prices, but a shortage of appropriate rental stock and of homes suited to an ageing population, combined with planning restrictions on one-off rural housing that have remained contentious throughout the decade.
Young adults, particularly those without family wealth to draw on for deposits or guarantees have seen homeownership rates fall dramatically relative to their parents’ generation. The 2022 Census showed that homeownership rates among 25-34 year olds had fallen to approximately 27% compared to over 50% in the same age cohort in 1991.
What the Evidence Suggests Might Work
Housing economists broadly agree on several points that have not been adequately reflected in Irish policy over the past decade.
First, supply is the primary lever. The ESRI’s housing research consistently finds that increasing overall supply is the most effective long-term mechanism for reducing prices and improving affordability. Demand-side subsidies – Help to Buy, First Home risk being capitalised into prices if supply does not keep pace.
Second, the planning system requires reform that is durable and not easily reversed by legal counter challenges. The Planning and Development Act 2024, which overhauled significant portions of the planning framework was a substantial legislative undertaking. Its practical effects on delivery timelines remain to be seen.
Third, social and cost rental housing requires sustained capital investment at a scale that the State has not yet committed to in practice, whatever the paper targets may say. The AHB sector, which is the primary delivery vehicle for affordable and social rental, is undercapitalised relative to the targets set for it.
Fourth, vacancy and dereliction need to be addressed more aggressively. Ireland has a significant stock of vacant and underused buildings, particularly in town centres, that could be converted to residential use. The Croí Cónaithe scheme offers grants for such conversions. Take-up has grown but remains far below what the overall vacancy problem would suggest is possible.
Where Things Stand in 2026
As Ireland’s EU Presidency begins, the housing situation remains the single most politically charged domestic issue. Taoiseach Micheál Martin described it as the defining challenge of the generation in a speech earlier this year. Housing output is higher than at any point in the post-crash period, but demand, driven by population growth, inward migration and household formation is also higher than the strategy anticipated.
The gap between supply and demand in the rental market remains acute. The gap between average house prices and what first-time buyers can borrow without parental assistance remains insurmountable for many. The number of people in emergency accommodation continues to rise.
A decade of housing strategies has produced real improvements the planning system is better than it was, the social housing delivery machinery is more functional, and construction output has recovered. But the improvements have not closed the gap that opened up between need and provision over the course of the 2010s. Doing so will require not just the continuation of current strategies but a sustained commitment of political capital and public funding that has, so far, always fallen somewhat short of what the scale of the problem demands.
