Poster sulle banchine di Dublino

>Death to landlords

Yeah, you lost me at this.

Setting aside the fact that it’s mostly wrong, the vacant houses are almost entirely in places nobody wants to live.

In simple terms, Ireland’s population has grown enormously over the last 30 or so years, far more than is the norm in Europe. Much of that growth has been anchored on Dublin. Compared to the early 90s, Leinster has about 1 million extra people, Connacht an extra 150,000 and Munster about 350,000. (Ulster is a bit messier due to the North.)

Again, keeping this simple, every year we have about 60,000 kids do the Leaving Cert. Most of them – about three quarters – go to third-level. Most people finish school these days, so that’s a relatively representative number.

For most of the 45,000 who go to third-level, Dublin is a major port of call. Of our universities, the wider Dublin area has Trinity, UCD, DCU, DIT/TUD and Maynooth.

For people who leave university, the obvious next step is a job. Unlike England, where there are a string of university towns and cities, Ireland’s universities are generally located in our major cities. If you want a job, your options are Dublin, Galway, Cork, Luimneach, etc.

So when somebody says there are X number of vacant or derelict houses, that number is meaningless. The question is, how many vacant or derelict houses are there in each part of the country.

And herein lies the boring truth, not many houses are vacant or derelict in Dublin, Cork, etc. People will jump up and down and write blogs about there are six houses vacant in Cork, or whatever, but it’s a tiny proportion of the whole. The vast majority of vacancy, dereliction, etc, is in isolated rural areas in the west. Areas where nobody wants to live.

The modern debate has now shifted to “I’d totally live in Ballymcneverheardofit if I could work from home” but again, we know that’s largely not true. Most people want to live where there are good schools, good houses and stuff to do. People are simple, social animals.