WHEN IT COMES to Ireland’s housing crisis, it’s fair to say we’ve endured some long-term pain. 

It’s been roughly a decade of missed housing targets, house prices exploding ever upwards, Airbnb eating into the rental supply and whatever else you’re having yourself. 

Fear not, however, as this week it was confirmed that we have entered the short-term pain phase of the housing crisis. Granted, from where we’re all standing, short-term pain at the end of long-term pain sort of feels the same as even-longer-term pain, but we have been reassured this week by Minister for Housing James Browne that the plan is, in fact, working. 

Following hot on the heels of evictions increasing by 51% year on year for Q1 (listen to me! Q1! Who do I think I am, Kendall Roy?), we’ve learned that rents have also surged to record levels during the same period. So in the space of seven days, we’ve learned that there’s been a sharp increase in people being kicked out of their homes, and the ones that still have homes are paying more money for the privilege than ever before. This is apparently the plan, and it is apparently working. 

“You cannot solve the housing crisis, you cannot solve the homeless crisis, you cannot solve the renting crisis without more properties”, said the Minister, echoing the same critiques that have been made of his department since someone first noticed that demand had begun to so catastrophically outstrip supply in Ireland. Yeah, we know that, James? That’s why we’ve been begging you to build more of them?

Unfortunately, it seems that a more accurate distillation of Browne’s logic would be this: “You cannot solve the housing crisis, you cannot solve the homeless crisis, you cannot solve the renting crisis without more very, very happy landlords”.

It is the earnest argument of the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael alliance........

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