Full coverage: Housing

Dublin City Council blocked journalists’ requests for access to private emergency accommodation payments for almost a decade. The public procurement of multi-million-euro contracts should never be a state secret.

In 2023, the State paid private property owners €140m – and rising – to put a roof over the heads of Dubliners left out in the cold by the housing crisis. In the first part of a major series, we name the biggest earners.

The Central Bank’s latest report confirms what many suspected — the systemic failures in Irish housing policy remain unaddressed.

Flood risk is no longer invisible in Ireland. The same needs to happen for the wider climate risks shaping the homes we build, buy, and live in.

By shifting away from private apartment construction in favour of state partnerships, the housing developer reported enviable profits for 2024.

Dublin City Council previously issued demands for payment for 2018 to 2022, with the total amount in levy payments connected to the long vacant site running to just shy of €185,000.

The rise in home completions was largely driven by a surge in new apartments. But this surge has stopped due to the tightening of rent controls and the scrapping of Strategic Housing Developments, and Buy-to-Rent codes.

New York’s experience with rent controls in the interwar years was – compared to other rent control systems – less painful. Rents were kept in check until new supply came on stream. There is nothing at the moment, however, to suggest that Ireland is following the same route.

Kenneth Donfield has fought for five years, from the RTB to the Four Courts, to avoid eviction from his bedsit flat and home of 21 years in a building now owned by Eamon Waters. The High Court has decided that the fight will go on.

Ireland is 13 years into a rental market crisis. Despite eight years of evidence the strategy of capping rents and diverting demand doesn’t work, not a single party has any real strategy for the rental sector.