Ireland's housing crisis is now its election. Nobody has a plan that fits on a poster
Rents in Dublin have doubled in a decade; the parties agree on the problem and on almost nothing else
The election posters on the lamp posts along the Liffey say different things, but they are all about the same subject. Ireland has a housing crisis, and for the first time it has an election about it.
Average rents in Dublin have doubled in ten years. The country builds about 33,000 homes a year and needs, by the government's own estimate, 50,000. Emigration among people in their twenties has risen for the first time since the financial crisis.
The governing parties promise to raise building to 60,000 a year by 2030. The opposition promises the same number, by a different method, with the state building most of them directly.
“Everyone agrees on the number,” said one economist. “Nobody has a plan that fits on a poster, because there isn't one.”
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