As most of us are aware, thousands of Irish citizens and residents took to the streets on June 17, 2025, outside Leinster House (the Dáil). The protests were held under the Raise the Roof banner, and organized by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions along with a broad coalition of housing, community, political, and social advocacy groups, demanding urgent action on the housing crisis.
I had a lot of time to think this over yesterday, and I had to process a lot of strong feelings that were always under the surface. These feelings were the reason why to me, this wasn’t just a national housing emergency – but also a reflection of a deeply moral, social, and even existential one.
Yes, house prices are unaffordable.
Yes, waiting lists for social housing are long.
But beneath all the stats and the spreadsheets lies something deeper — a crisis of values, identity, and collective dignity.
1. Over-Reliance on Private Investment & The Profit Motive.
Over the past decades, governments across Europe—including Ireland—have continued to give up a substantial portion of housing delivery to private developers. In Ireland, this move was accelerated in the 2010s when the government decided to greatly reduce the funding of social housing following the 2008 market crash – and began relying heavily on the private sector to address housing supply.
‘Cuckoo funds’ (large investment firms that buy up large numbers of residential properties with the intention of renting them out, rather than selling them), suddenly became even more powerful in the Irish housing market.
Though I understand that the profit motive has always played an important role in homes being built, it has become very disproportionate when compared to both social and moral motivations. And I find it quite sad.
This over-reliance on private developers to build homes creates a problem.
- Developers need high market prices to turn a profit (today even more due high cost of materials and shortage of labour ).
- Falling house prices, while good for buyers and renters, are bad for developers. Especially small developers.
- As a result, supply is kept artificially constrained.
And the average citizen is left to deal with the consequences.
2. How Dehumanising Language Hides the Human Cost
A home is the largest investment most people will ever make, but the emotional connection to the home is also deeply personal.
I have always felt that business language deliberately makes things feel impersonal, just to take away the moral ‘feel’ or emotion out of them.
In media or business literature, you may have noticed homes increasingly referred to as:
- Units
- Assets
- Stock
This language strips away the emotional, cultural, and personal meanings that homes carry. A “unit” might be vacant or occupied on a spreadsheet—but to the tenant, it’s a warm home, a safe place, a place where a child takes their first steps, where birthdays are celebrated and where a life is lived.
But when a house is treated as an asset and reduced to a simple return on an investment, it becomes easier to openly discriminate against those who can’t afford one.
3. Homes as Financial Products (CDOs & CDSs)
While this is invisible to the average man or woman, global housing markets allow large institutions to:
- Bundle mortgages, car loans, credit card debt and other consumer debts into financial instruments (e.g. CDOs) for trading.
- Trade, bet and speculate on the likelihood of people defaulting on their mortgages for a huge payout in return.
This kind of abstract gambling, which greatly caused the 2008 crash, still continues. The global economy is still gambling on people’s ability or inability to pay their rent or mortgage—essentially betting on human suffering and collapse.
It turns people’s livelihoods into chips on a global casino table.
4. Wage Stagnation vs. Housing Inflation
In the last 5 years since the COVD-19 pandemic, prices of goods and services have risen dramitically in Ireland. However, wages and income have not moved in the same direction at all.
According to the Raise the Roof website, only 1 in 5 Irish workers can afford the average-priced home.
And so the result is predictable – housing has now become a privilege, not a right. Two-income households struggling to live with dignity, and young people seeing homeownership as an impossible dream.
5. Homelessness is Growing.
To me, this isn’t just a housing failure—it’s a moral one.
I previously lived in Dublin for many years, and the increasing images of people sleeping rough in a supposedly wealthy country undermine any real claim to societal progress or national success.
*** The above figures only record those in state emergency homeless accommodation, but not those that are in ‘own-door’ temporary accommodation, domestic violence refuges, asylum seekers, people who are sleeping rough, and the very many who are ‘hidden homeless’ and staying with family or friends in insecure housing.
Despite billions in budgets and plans, homelessness continues to rise:
- Dublin sees record-high shelter demand.
- More families are living in hotels, cars, and emergency accommodation.
6. Misdirected Anger, Nationalism, and Division
If you follow patterns throughout history, you will notice that economic pain usually comes before scapegoating. And when a national crisis is mismanaged, those suffering will often become radicalised.
Extreme-right actors can weaponise crises and create false narratives by seemingly offering easy answers to complex systemic failures.
- Rising rents and lack of homes leads to blame shifting on ‘tangible undesirables‘ – in this case, immigrants and small landlords.
- This allows the real intangible culprit – the government – to escape scrutiny for poor policies while citizens and residents fight among themselves.
The protests we have seen up until now are still peaceful.
However, the government’s inaction risks fuelling extremism – as inequality and instability are fertile ground for very dangerous ideologies. Housing justice is social stability.
If we fail to act somehow, division and resentment will only grow.
7. Shame, Emigration, and the Erosion of Dignity
As an immigrant myself who had to leave his country in search of better opportunities, this might be the most emotionally potent point from everything I have observed.
When people feel ashamed for being unable to live independently in their own country while only luxury homes and apartments are being built, it breeds alienation, bitterness and a sense of hopelessness. The inability to build a life, own a home, or even plan for a future can be psychologically devastating for an entire generation.
- Irish adults are increasingly forced to move back in with their parents – As an adult male in my 30s, I know the deep sense of shame and failure that can develop as a result of this. And when not dealt with properly, this feeling can negatively overwhelm you and your loved ones.
- Talented young people emigrating in search of opportunity – The most recent reports show that more than 12% of Irish in their 20s emigrate, with housing access a major concern. See more HERE.
- Young couples have to keep pushing their plans to start a family as they simply cannot afford it.
- A widespread sense of failure, even when it’s the system that failed.
We are watching an entire generation lose faith in their country, and I believe that is a loss that cannot be measured in euros or square metres.
A Call for Moral Reckoning.
Housing is much more than just a commodity. It is a basic human need.
The Raise the Roof protests are not just about numbers. They are also about reclaiming the dignity of the average citizen.
- Why should the average citizen continue to suffer from wave after wave of poor government policy?
- Why do young adults have to continue to push their plans to start their own families?
- Why can’t working people afford a place to live?
- Why do promising young people have to continue to emigrate because they feel hopeless?
This is more than a policy issue. It is also a cry for change on a systemic level.
