Thirty thousand apply for just 135 cost rental homes
Neither the Government nor the Opposition parties can promise younger people an affordable roof over their heads and both offer social democratic sticking plasters which will not solve the massive housing problems faced by Irish workers.
15th May 2026
Without fundamental change, the crisis in the private rented sector of the housing market is not going away. Thousands of individuals and families are being forced into this market by the refusal of successive coalition governments to invest in social housing and by the decades-long policy of the deliberate sell-off and run down of local authority housing stocks. The Republic of Ireland's social housing model has undergone a profound structural shift from a state-led, asset-building function to a marketised, financialised ‘affordable’ housing model. Renters are increasingly under the thumb of large financial concerns acting as landlords while governmental regulation is market-oriented and, therefore, toothless.
This is not just an Irish phenomenon. Across the EU over the past decade, housing prices and rents have risen significantly faster than wages, pushing decent, affordable homes out of reach for workers and their families. Prices have risen dramatically, and construction costs are rising while public investment in housing construction has sharply declined.
According to recent reports, the housing association Tuath has received 30,000 applications for just 135 cost rental homes delivered so far in 2026. This highlights that many households in the so-called ‘squeezed middle’ are priced out of rents at current market prices but do not qualify for social housing. The Workers Party rejects the category of the ‘squeezed middle’ as a divisive distraction. Means-tested social housing stigmatises poor people: all workers should have access to quality public housing.
But the capitalist housing market is based on profit rather than the needs of workers., According to official data, between 2015–2025 the housing market became 63.6% more expensive, while rents rose by at least 21.1%. More than 1.1 million people are homeless across the EU; 18 million people are facing severe housing deprivation; 75 million people are living in overcrowded conditions; 69 million people are living in substandard housing and over 64 million households are struggling with housing costs.
Soft Opposition
Sinn Féin and its partners in opposition in the Dáil seek only to manage capitalism better rather than replace it. In Northern Ireland where Sinn Féin has been in government (off and on) since 1998, housing waiting lists remain high and private developers continue to lead delivery with the usual disastrous consequences for workers. Nearly 50,000 households were on the social housing waiting list in Northern Ireland by the end of 2025. Of these, 38,620 were in housing stress and 32,993 were legally recognised as homeless or threatened with homelessness. The most common reasons given for homelessness were accommodation not reasonable to live in, family/share breakdown, and loss of rented accommodation, presumably because poorer renters are being priced out of an inflationary rental market
Because the market on its own is failing to produce sufficient adequate housing, Fine Fáil/Fine Gael have recently adopted a social-democratic approach which subsidises buyers so they can reach market prices. Sinn Féin’s social democratic approach would involve subsidising housebuilding by removing land costs with the aims of bringing market price down while retaining profits for developers, bankers, and hedge-funds.
Both the current coalition and the SF coalition-in-waiting essentially offer home ownership to a minority of workers. For the 55% of workers earning €45k or less (35% to 40% of all households), neither the current government's ‘Shared Equity’ nor Sinn Féin's ‘Affordable Purchase’ provides a realistic path to owning a home. The Sinn Féin proposal to build 75,000 social housing units is far too low to clear the current waiting lists and the SF policy would continue to segregate the working class into mortgage holders in one camp and the more or less ‘deserving poor’ in social and rented accommodation.
In terms of demographics, it is particularly concerning that 13.5% of all adults live at home with their parents and among 21–25-year-olds, this rises to almost 62%. Under the current system, these young people may chase the increasingly elusive dream of private home ownership. But only a state housing programme in a socialist society can offer workers stability in housing. For most people, the ‘solutions’ offered both by FF-FG and by SF are a disaster.
Meanwhile, among those angling for a ministerial seat in a future SF government, the ‘revolutionary socialists’ of People Before Profit have shown a touching faith in the transformative capacities of a ‘Right to Housing’ Referendum. One hundred and ten years after the Proclamation declared “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible” the country is owned by US and EU billionaires in cahoots with our local multi-millionaire class. Only a State Construction Company taking land and resources into permanent public ownership can ensure that housing as a right is achieved. And that can only be guaranteed in an economy aimed at meeting the needs of its people and not the financial portfolios of capitalists.