| KEY TAKEAWAYS | WHAT IT MEANS |
|---|---|
| Home sales fell by 8% in 2025 | Fewer people can buy, not because demand has gone down, but just because prices are too damn high |
| Prices rose 5% in 2025 | Confirms a structural housing shortage, rather than a cooling market |
| Private supply alone cannot fix this | Developers respond to profit, not social need |
| Direct State building is essential | Only the State can build affordable homes at scale |
| The €14bn Apple fund is a once-off chance | It can permanently expand Ireland’s housing stock without inflationary pressure |
Summary of Irish Times Article
For a more detailed read on the article, please go HERE.
- Sales Decline – The number of homes sold in Ireland in 2025 was down 8%, which reflects reduced market activity.
- Price Growth – Despite fewer sales, house prices continued to go up. The median home price at the end of 2025 was €390,000, a 5.4% increase compared with 2024.
- Urban vs Rural – Price increases were stronger in urban areas, with urban prices rising more than rural ones. This shows that demand pressure continues to be high in urban areas.
- Energy-Efficient Homes – These homes were the exception to the sales decline, with sales 2.4% in 2025 when compared to 2024. This suggests growing interest in sustainable properties.
- Price Breakdown – In 2025, the median apartment price went up about 5% (€336,000) and the median house price went up 6.1% (€400,000) compared to 2024.
A Clear Market Warning.
At first glance, an 8% drop in the number of homes sold in 2025 might sound like the early signs of a cooling market. In a normal housing system, falling sales would normally force prices to go down.
But that is not what’s happening.
Instead, prices have continued to rise, and this is a pattern that has become disturbingly familiar in Ireland. What this tells us is that demand is being suppressed by lack of supply and high prices. People are not choosing to sit out of the market. They are simply being forced out of it.
When transaction volumes fall while prices increase, it indicates:
- Severe supply shortages
- Limited choice for buyers
- A market dominated by scarcity rather than competition
This is a structural failure in the Irish housing system, which is very dependent on private developers to provide social and affordable housing.
The Limits of a Housing Supply System Led by Private Developers.
Make no mistake. I am not in anyway trying to say that private developers are bad. Private developers, big and small are very essential to providing homes. The problem starts when a country is over-dependent on private developers to provide social and affordable housing.
Ireland’s housing strategy has, for over a decade, relied heavily on private developers to solve a public crisis.
That model has clear limits.
Private developers:
- Build when profits justify it
- Prioritise higher-priced units
- Deliver homes slower durign uncertainties
- Cannot build counter-cyclically at scale, meaning that private developers reduce or pause building during economic uncertainty because profits become less predictable. The State on the other hand doesn’t typically have this problem.
This is not a criticism, this is simply how markets work.
But what about housing schemes?
Housing policy in recent years have leaned heavily on demand-side supports such as:
- The Help-to-Buy Scheme
- Shared Equity
- First Home schemes
While these schemes are very well-intentioned and have helped numerous people, these measures do not increase housing supply. They only:
- Increase the purchasing power of the buyer to bid more for the same limited number of homes.
- Allow buyers to compete over limited housing stock which pushes prices higher
In a market already short of homes, subsidies only act like fuel on a fire. They help individual buyers in the short term but worsen conditions for everyone else over time.
This is why prices continue to rise even as fewer homes are sold.
Why Direct State Building Changes the Equation.
Direct State building works because it does what the private market cannot.
When the State builds affordable homes directly:
- Output is driven mainly by need, not profits
- Supply can continue even when there is economic uncertainty
- Prices are stabilised in the market as there are more homes available
- Homes remain in public ownership or long-term affordable use
Ireland has done this before.
Large-scale local authority building programmes that started in the mid-20th century helped to:
- Dramatically reduce housing shortages
- Stabilise rents and prices
- Created long-term public assets
The decline of direct build programmes did not eliminate the demand for homes, it simply transferred responsibility to a private market that was never designed to carry it alone.
How Modular and Modern Methods Can Make Scale Possible
One of the strongest arguments against state-building has always been speed and cost. That argument no longer holds.
Modern construction methods now allow:
- Faster delivery
- Lower per-unit costs
- Higher energy efficiency
- Standardised designs with local flexibility
Modular and MMC construction is particularly well-suited to:
- Social housing
- Cost-rental homes
- Starter homes
- Rapid urban infill
Used correctly, these methods allow the State to:
- Build tens of thousands of homes
- Do so predictably
- Avoid the boom-bust cycles of private delivery
Vacant and Derelict Homes – The Fastest Supply Win
Ireland has over 80,000 vacant properties, many of which are structurally sound and located in existing towns and cities.
The State can empower local authorities to
- Purchase
- Refurbish and
- Retain ownership of qualifying, easily-restorable vacant & derelict homes.
With enough political willpower and just a year or two, this could:
- Add 10,000+ homes in the market faster than new builds
- Revitalise town centres
- Reduce infrastructure strain
Yet progress remains slow due to:
- Under-resourced councils
- Fragmented funding
- Complex buying and planning processes
With proper capital backing, this could deliver thousands of homes within a few years.
Why the 14billion Apple Tax Fund Is the Best Source of Capital to Help Fix Ireland’s Housing Crisis
The €14bn Apple tax windfall, which was finally collected in full by the Irish Government in July 2025, is not recurring revenue.
- It was money that was owed to the Irish State since 2016
- It is not borne by the common taxpayer, so this fund is an incredible public service
- It is not a foreign loan, so there are no state obligations or strings attached to a foreign lender.
That is precisely why it should be allocated fully as capital investment to resolve the housing emergency right now, rather than being stored away in the well-intentioned but non-urgent National Development Plan where the money now sits.
With a little political willpower, the Irish Government could use this fund immediately and strategically to:
- Empower local councils to buy qualifying vacant & easily-restorable derelict buildings from willing sellers
- Directly contract local SME builders to help restore these vacant homes and or build new homes using modular and modern methods of construction
- Allow local councils to own these vacant buildings and add them to the social housing stock
- Create a temporal scheme that will bring in the missing, skilled workforce from Africa, Asia and South America, necessary to build these homes and improve public infrastructure
- Improve Uisce Eireann’s infrastructure by contributing to its Leakage Programme – millions of litres of treated water are lost a day through leakages, which could be vital for construction and public welfare
- Better fund the HBIF and introduce loan schemes that can activate the real sleeping construction giants i,e small & medium builders.
- Improve the planning system by reducing judicial reviews and making sure that local councils are properly staffed.
- Reduce reliance on the private rental market to stabilise house and rent prices nationwide
And so much more!!
Deploying this fund right now would permanently improve Ireland’s housing system. I cannot guarantee that it would fix it, but it would sure as hell put a massive dent in the housing crisis for decades to come.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and the Irish State would be remiss to waste it.
Final Words
Ireland’s housing outcomes are not accidental. They are the result of many policy choices gone wrong. But that doesn’t mean the problem cannot be fixed or improved at the root.
Direct State building is not a radical idea. It is simply practical, and using the Apple fund specifically for housing is not reckless during a housing emergency.
When enough homes are supplied outside private speculative markets:
- House Prices and rents stabilise a lot better than housing schemes
- Buyers stop competing aggressively
- And house prices become more comparable with incomes
So the question is no longer what needs to be done. It is whether the political will exists to do it.
