Ireland boasts the 4th highest GDP per capita globally and hosts tech giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook. Yet in August 2025, over 16,000 people, including 5,145 children, were living in emergency accommodation, while an estimated 290,000 experience "invisible homelessness."

How did one of the world's wealthiest nations create a housing crisis where young professionals sleep in cars, average rents exceed €2,000 monthly, and only 7% of 25-39 year olds can afford homeownership?

In this episode, we trace Ireland's housing catastrophe from its colonial roots through the Great Famine's mass evictions, the Celtic Tiger boom and spectacular bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the influx of vulture funds that now control 113,000 mortgages. We examine failed policies like the Help to Buy scheme that inflated prices instead of creating affordability, rent pressure zones that created two-tier markets, and "leprechaun economics", where Apple's $300 billion accounting restructuring artificially inflated Ireland's GDP by 34% overnight.

With expert analysis, policy breakdowns, and real human stories, we explore why Ireland builds only 32,949 homes annually when it needs 50,000-60,000, how infrastructure deficits constrain construction, and what solutions, from Vienna's social housing model to Finland's Housing First approach, could actually work.

This is the story of housing financialization, regulatory capture, and the choice between homes for people or profits for investors. It's about what prosperity really means when your own citizens have nowhere to call home.

Read more: https://theurb.co/irish-housing-crisis