The Last Gasp of the Gael: It’s More Than a Housing Crisis
Word count: 2,908
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Summary: Lúcás Oh-Alice argues that the housing crisis is not merely a policy failure - it threatens to erase the Irish nation. He contends that to treat it as a discrete economic issue is reductive; housing impinges on collective psychological well-being, birth rate, rootedness, and other variables pertinent to national survival and well-being.
The Irish housing crisis is often framed as a policy failure, characterised by a mismatch between supply and demand, planning bottlenecks, and financial incentives that have gone awry. But this view is profoundly incomplete. Ireland’s enduring inability to house its people is not just an economic miscalculation or bureaucratic tangle. It is a national emergency with demographic and civilizational consequences. Beneath the headlines of rising rents and stalling construction lies a more profound crisis: the slow unravelling of the social fabric, and with it, the future of the Irish people as a self-sustaining nation.
This is not simply about affordability. It is about fertility, generational continuity, and a people's ability to establish a sense of belonging in their place. The housing crisis, now stretching into its third decade, is accelerating a quiet but deadly demographic decline. The Irish birth rate is below replacement level, and emigration, once romanticised as a rite of passage, is again a structural reality. As young adults delay or abandon plans for family, home ownership, or even long-term residency in Ireland, the very conditions necessary for cultural continuity and national reproduction are being eroded.
A Crisis Beyond Crisis: Ireland’s New Normal
It is challenging to consistently refer to Ireland’s housing problem as a “crisis” when it has persisted for over twenty-five years. A more accurate term might be “managed decay.” Government after government, policy after policy, and the outcomes remain depressingly similar: soaring rents, dwindling homeownership, and an undersupplied market marred by delays, uncertainty, and political inertia.
In 2011, 22% of individuals aged 25 to 39 owned homes. Today, it is just 7%. That is a demographic collapse in household formation, traditionally the cornerstone of community, family, identity, and intergenerational wealth. For most, home ownership has gone from a reasonable life aspiration to a distant dream. Instead, hundreds of thousands are locked in precarious tenancies, often paying €2,000 or more a month in rent, unable to save for deposits, start families, or plan for the future.
Yet, rather than tackle the problem with the urgency it deserves, the state offers technocratic band-aids: a new “housing tsar,” overlapping quangos, and vague targets that are rarely met. Last year, the government promised 40,000 new homes. Only 30,330 were built. Meanwhile, housing commencements, an indicator of future supply, have plummeted to their lowest since 2016.
The Demographic Dimension: A Nation Falling Off a Cliff
The consequences of this failure extend far beyond housing metrics. Ireland’s total fertility rate (TFR) has dropped below the 2.1 replacement level, with many counties seeing sharp declines in school enrolment, childcare demand, and first-time birth registrations. This is not coincidental.
Coupled with further demographic statistics, the place of the Gael in the world is rapidly descending to the depths of extinction. For the island of Ireland, the total population is 7.2 million. Ireland’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) currently stands at 1.5, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. This decline is closely tied to socio-economic conditions, particularly housing. The prime age for childbearing, biologically and financially, is between 25 and 39, with the median age now around 35. Alarmingly, 93% of individuals in this age bracket do not own a home, a long-standing foundation for stable family creation and planning. Suppose we account for the skewed distribution of capital and home ownership by wealth. In that case, the figure may rise as high as 96% for the median cohort, who typically hold less accumulated capital than those at the top of the income scale.
This already precarious situation points to a looming demographic crisis of extinction-level proportions. Without home ownership or housing security, many young Irish people are deferring or forgoing starting families altogether. As the housing crisis worsens, so too does the likelihood of long-term fertility decline.
Layered on top of this is the mass demographic shift underway in Ireland. Emigration from the island in 2024 reached an average of 60,000 people, with the median age of emigrants around 24, a key age for childbearing. Only about 30,000 people return each year, and these returnees are often older, with a median age approaching 39, according to the CSO’s 2024 inward migration data. This means that Ireland is not just losing young talent, but also the generational potential for population renewal.
Together, these trends paint a stark picture: a sustained decline in the fertility rate, exacerbated by systemic housing failures and profound demographic shifts, that will contribute to the erasure of the Gael.
Inward migration flows add significant pressure on housing, as evident by any public viewing in Ireland. The annual inward migration for 2024 was exceptionally high. On the island of Ireland alone, it was 180,000. Even if we take into account the returning Irish, the figure would be about 150,000. This 150,000 is expected to rise substantially year on year. This does not also include undocumented, which according to International Protection Office statistics in 2024, 18,561 applied for international protection, the number of undocumented is likely much higher, as not all undocumented migrants will apply for international protection and instead will overstay short stay visas, or slip through the border and stay, if we account for Northern Ireland, which is known for illegal migration flow transfers moving through the UK, the undocumented per annum could easily be 40,000. That would hover around 190,000 per year of inward non-Irish migration to the island of Ireland, which, as a percentage of the total population, is stark to say the least. Bearing in mind that the total native Irish population on the island is only about 85 per cent, as per the latest census statistics. In the republic, 1.21 million individuals residing in the state were born outside of the state. In the north, as per the latest census, only 29 per cent of respondents stated that they were Irish only. That means that, on the island of Ireland alone, only 5,096,700 people out of the 7.2 million recipients could be classified as ethnically Irish. However, this may be even lower than that, as a first- or second-born immigrant could easily classify themselves as Irish alone in Census reports, having grown up in the country and culture.
Rapid demographic changes aside, the 190,000 new arrivals per annum will also need to be housed immediately upon arrival each year, thus further straining the already constrained supply of housing in the country. For example, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, over one-third of the Housing Assistance Payment grants in 2019 were awarded to non-Irish nationals, indicating that even with a constrained supply, there is increased external competition for urgently needed national grants to access the available resources. Bear in mind that this figure is likely to have risen as of 2025, due to the absence of legislative changes to the grant scheme's financial checks for non-Irish nationals who have yet to establish a tax history in Ireland, combined with increased inward migration flows. This means that, already facing a daunting challenge, Irish young people, when seeking to purchase their first home on the property ladder, will lose out 4 out of 10 times to a non-Irish national competing for the same home. Not only that on average, foreign migrants arriving in Ireland will have a much higher TFR rate than Irish nationals, this competing for the prime houses on the market with space large enough to accommodate for a generally larger family, thus further straining the capacity of family planning growth for Irish nationals as they are out competed and forced to buy smaller homes or apartments. If the average Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of Ireland stands at 1.5 and is declining, and a general estimate of migrant TFR is at 2.0 or possibly higher, then it is safe to assume a rapid decline in the native Gaelic population. If these rates remain the same, which is unlikely, that means the native-born Irish population will be a minority in their own country by 2050. If rates worsen, which is likely, that will be the case in 2040, thus extinguishing the Gael to the annals of civilisational destruction.
Stable, affordable housing is one of the strongest predictors of family formation and stability. If young Irish adults cannot settle, they delay or forgo having children. If they cannot afford long-term tenure, they emigrate. If they cannot invest in a future here, they will build one elsewhere. The social and economic costs of this are staggering, but the cultural costs may be irreversible.
A society that cannot reproduce itself biologically or socially is living on borrowed time. The Gael, once intrinsically tied to place, language, tradition, and continuity, is being priced out of its homeland and into extinction.
Capital vs. Community: Who Benefits from Crisis?
This outcome is not accidental. It is the result of decades of policy that privileges capital over community. Land hoarding, speculative development, and an over-reliance on multinational build-to-rent schemes have created a housing model that is extractive rather than generative.
Efforts to control rents have often backfired. The 2021 reduction in permissible rent increases from 4% to 2% may have deterred institutional investment just as new supply pipelines were maturing. Between 2020 and 2024, Ireland went from attracting 14% of residential investment in the UK and Ireland combined to just 3–4%. The state undermined its ability to build.
Despite having over 2.1 million homes with approximately 6.7 million bedrooms, we are told there is a shortage. However, the problem is not only raw supply; it is also form, access, and policy design.
At any given time, a healthy housing market should have about 5% of the total housing stock available for sale. In Ireland, with approximately 2 million homes nationwide, that would mean around 100,000 homes should be on the market. Instead, we currently have just 1%, roughly 20,000 homes, available for sale at any one time.
This severe shortage is compounded by rising demand. The current predicted yearly housing demand stands at 320,000 homes, a figure that continues to rise due to inward migration and shifting patterns in social mobility. The gap between what is needed and what is available has become a structural crisis, not just a market fluctuation.
Another starkly unfathomable figure is that in 1987, the average house cost 1.7 times the average income; you could buy one on a single income. Today, it’s seven times the average income.
Further sullying matters is the ever-politicised obfuscation of the term “home’’, What constitutes a home can vary widely, from quality to size to location. What good is a home to a young couple looking to build a family if it is located in a remote rural area, unserved by amenities, with limited employment nearby, and not connected to transportation routes? Does that hold the same value in government figures of building targets as a home in an otherwise connected area? The market says otherwise, but the political rhetoric does not. What good is a home if it is not of habitable scale, rife with mould, leaks, shoddy construction and compromised internal structure, often requiring hundreds of thousands to repair? The shiny advertisements of a private company's new builds present one portrayal, but the reality for a purchaser often reveals otherwise.
Even beyond the relative semantics of new build flaws and location isolation, typology begs the question further. It would not surprise anyone if the state inflated the real figure of what a home constitutes, with examples like the overpriced, poor-quality, and poorly connected tiny apartment. Does that constitute the same societal value as a home, enough to even begin to raise a family, according to state figures on the number of homes built? The answer is an emphatic no. A disconnected pigeonhole is no place to roost. It is intrinsically anti-human, purely to organise individualist, rootless economic civic units sacrificed at the altar of GDP, instead of continuing the lifeblood of a nation that stood against the worst for hundreds of years.
For example, in 2024, the CSO reported that 30,330 new homes were built, which the government parties lauded as “homes” constructed. 8,763 of those “homes” built were apartments. The likelihood of those apartments falling into the three categories as mentioned earlier is likely high, and even worse a large percentage (likely 20%) of those apartments would not even be for sale, but built to rent, thus restricting access of property ownership in the favour of property asset management firms over Irish citizens. Ireland is culturally, politically, and historically a home-owning nation, in the house variety, not the apartment variety; we did not have socialism, corporatism, fascism, or a dreaded Le Corbusier, like in many European nations, so the sociological habitat of apartment living was never the norm for the Gael. In fact, the nation has a collective cultural disgust for cramped living pigeon coops ever since we dealt with the life-threatening tenements of inner city Dublin and tore down the highly unsafe flats of Ballymun. This rapid decline in homeownership and the sudden shift to apartment construction will likely have another negative sociological consequence for family planning. Ireland has always had a proud tradition of house-building projects before this pertinent crisis, and actual houses with space to raise families in. If De Valera could build over 200,000 homes spanning his term amid an intense trade war with the United Kingdom and the devastation of the Second World War, there should be no reason we cannot eclipse this feat.
Bureaucratic Paralysis and Institutional Failure
As public anger mounts, the state’s response has been to layer bureaucracy atop bureaucracy. The Land Development Agency (LDA), once hailed as a game changer, is now bogged down in red tape. Incredibly, it is often easier for the agency to build on private land than on land already owned by the state.
Meanwhile, VAT anomalies, density restrictions, and absurd build costs mean an apartment that costs €300,000 in Belfast costs €496,000 in Dublin. Zoning laws exacerbate the issue: 70% of zoned land under Ireland’s main homebuilding local authorities is deemed unsuitable for large dwellings due to outdated density caps.
The result is a crisis that is both acute and institutionalised. Those in government cycle through talking points about supply and targets, while the basic structural reforms, such as constitutional housing rights, planning simplification, land value capture, and a public homebuilding agency with formidable execution, remain unexplored or resisted.
A Question of Continuity, Not Just Shelter
The housing issue is not merely about economics, finance, or planning law. It is about sovereignty, culture, and the future of the Irish nation-state. Can a people survive, culturally and demographically, without the physical space to reproduce and remain?
History tells us: no.
Nationhood is not maintained solely by GDP growth, employment figures, or foreign investment. It is sustained through homes, families, schools, and stable communities. Without these, Ireland will become a territory of transience, where people pass through, but do not put down roots.
The longer this crisis endures, the greater the risks. We may retain the trappings of a state, such as laws, taxes, and a parliament, but without a homegrown population able and willing to settle here, it will be a state in form only, not in substance.
Toward a National Response
It is time to fundamentally rethink housing in Ireland, not as a narrow policy issue, but as the cornerstone of national continuity and survival. Housing must be treated as a civic right and public good, not just a market commodity. This requires enshrining the right to housing in the Constitution, ensuring that every citizen has legal recourse to secure shelter.
A new sovereign housing authority should be established with the mandate and capacity to directly build and deliver public homes, independent of market volatility.
Planning and tax regimes must be reformed to incentivise building. Zoning laws should allow for housing to grow unconstrained by unnecessary red tape within reason. Crucially, all future housing and infrastructure planning should include demographic impact assessments to understand how policy decisions affect fertility, family formation, and the sense of a community. A home is a space for Gaelic families to grow and flourish, not a pigeonhole for economic civic units. These reforms are not ideological; they are urgently needed, pragmatic responses to a national emergency. Without bold action, a generation of young Irish people will be locked out of their own country, unable to settle or start families. To protect the future of the Irish nation, housing must be elevated to a first-order priority of the state. Otherwise, the Gael will live no more, spread to the wind and unable to even think about affording to have a family, never mind a home.
Last Gasp or Second Wind?
The housing crisis is not just a failure of policy; it is an existential shame of national degradation. It reveals a state that no longer understands what it means to build for its people. If left unaddressed, Ireland will continue down a path of low fertility, high emigration, and demographic decline. The last gasp of the Gael will not come in fire or famine, but in silence, drowned out by the hum of data centres, transient economic migrants and construction cranes building few homes few can afford and fewer can call their own.
To reverse this trajectory, Ireland must act boldly and with urgency. Not for the markets. Not for the investors. But for the generations yet to come, who deserve not just shelter, but a country to belong to. The future survival of the nation depends on it.