'I pay €700 for a bed in a room with four people'

The ideas above are for nothing when faced with the truth of the matter that there are far, far too many people after moving here.

That's the source of the strain, and no amount of fiddling with building regulations or tax is going to come close to solve it. As amply proven by the entirety of time of this housing crisis.

If a hundred thousand extra homes were to magically appear overnight, how quickly would they be filled by the government tripping over itself? 3 or 4 months of ukrainian refugees and all the rest? And then what?

As a mental exercise, if needed, imagine a sudden departure of 400k people. Forgetting any other impact, what would happen to the housing crisis? To rents? To availability? To mobility?

Its awkward to tackle, but it's not going away by ignoring it. To the contrary, the longer it's ignored, well, look around.

There will need to be a move here to an expectation of long term rental then. It doesn't necessarily make sense that everyone would be able to afford to buy a home. Houses in the 80's were basically concrete shells with single glazed windows and no heating systems. They have become much higher spec and therefore more expensive to build.

It's not just that, we need a greater density of housing. In every other city in europe there's apartment blocks everywhere. Even outside of the city. In ireland it's huge swathes of low density housing estates and they're all pretty close to the city.

they do want building. but labour & materials are short. so costs are high. the market can only bear so much at the moment. Build too much and supply will drive down sales price. which means developers won't make a profit (or maybe not as much of a profit as they need).

if you remember the boom days building sites were staffed full of eastern europeans. a lot of them went home/to uk after the bust and never returned.

The ratio of income to rent is far better in Germany than it is here. And there are benefits to higher density housing. I'm not talking about massive blocks that are 20 stories tall but just bigger than what we do now. It's unusual to see a building anywhere near the city centre in germany that's less than 6-7 stories tall. Because of that it's easier to cycle, it's easier to provision public transport. There's a greater density of amenities.

Ireland is more like the US. Big sprawling suburbs. Very few rail links and that's because people would still need to drive to their local train line or tram because the estates are so big. So then we rely on busses which are stuck on roads that are jammed with the cars of people commuting. When I lived in blanch there was a shopping mall and a small main st. The main street had very few shops worth visiting. If I wanted to get a train it was a 25 min walk. So there's busses that take ages to get into town. Or to any other place in dublin.

Here because of the higher density the main streets in suburbs have every type of shop you could imagine. The subway/tram is only a few minutes away too. And there's plenty of parks/stuff like that.

Irelands solution is to keep building out. Build more sprawling suburbs in towns near Dublin until they all merge into each other.

BTW, you're right about not as many people buying here but that's because it's cheaper to rent and it's just as stable. In ireland I was always scared of the landlord making something up to kick me out. Now I don't worry about it. You can actually plan long term and be in rental accommodation here.

Yeah, I am not disagreeing about the benefits of high density living. The area you live in, the ruhrgebiet, is the most densely populated part of Germany. I am questioning whether it is the best, or even a good option, for young people who would like to eventually own their own home. I am not sure how long you have been living there, but do you own where you live? Did you buy it recently (last 10 years)? Prices have gone up a lot in Germany, although they are probably starting to fall now with the rising interest rates.

The census data suggests otherwise

166,000 vacant with nearly 50,000 vacant for 6 years.

That's seriously bad news.

It's reported now that 1% of the population/entities in Ireland basically own 27% of the country

Think about it, if all those properties suddenly became available to rent/buy the demand would fall off a cliff (So long as property ownership and controls were put in place) and hence the prices for renting and buying would also drop.

There are "officially" 48 TD's that are land lords and of the 48, most are FF and FG with some SF and Ind. They aren't going to change this, they'd be hugely out of pocket as a result.

Our political landscape is busted completely, half the Dail are millionaires, they do not represent Joe Public in any real sense.

In Germany a lot of the properties for rental are owned by large landlords, like REITs here. I think it is a better system. There are still rentals owned by small landlords and they can get the property back, even if you have been there 30 years, if they need it for their own use. There are a lot of similar problems in Germany to here although maybe not to the same extent.