When Ireland became an independent State it inherited some appallingly bad housing conditions. This was most notoriously the case in the severely deprived areas of inner-city Dublin, but inadequate and overcrowded housing which lacked basic facilities was also prevalent in towns and villages and rural areas around the country. Over the following seven decades, significant... Read more »

Margaret Burns, P.J. Drudy, Rory Hearne and Peter McVerry SJ Introduction Providing affordable, quality and accessible housing for our people is a priority ... The actions of the New Partnership Government will work to end the housing shortage and homelessness. (Programme for Government, May 2016) Against a background of deepening public concern about the increasing... Read more »

Peter McVerry SJ, Eoin Carroll and Margaret Burns Homelessness The Continuing Rise in Homelessness The most disturbing aspect of the current housing crisis is, of course, the extent to which individuals and families are experiencing homelessness. While homelessness has been rising since at least 2013 there has been a particularly marked increase since 2015. As... Read more »

Jerome Connolly Introduction There is in the Sherlock Holmes canon a particular and often-quoted phrase which comes to mind when scrutinising the housing policies of successive Irish governments over the last two decades. The phrase refers to an incident concerning a dog guarding stables from which a racehorse had been stolen during the night. The... Read more »