With Ireland now at the helm of the Council of the European Union until December 2026, Dublin is expected to use its six-month presidency to push the housing debate even higher up the EU’s political priorities.

To mark the start of Ireland’s term, Housing Europe, in cooperation with the Irish EU Presidency and the national Housing Agency, hosted “State of Housing in Ireland” webinar on 15 July. We brought together more than 100 participants to look beyond the Irish experience and ask a wider question – what can the EU do differently to help deliver more social and affordable homes?

Ireland is under intense housing pressure, but it is also arriving at the EU table with a major national plan, a growing cost-rental sector and the opportunity to advance several important European housing files.

Ireland wants to keep the momentum going

Diarmuid O’Leary from Ireland’s Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage set out the Presidency’s three overarching themes: competitiveness, values and security. Housing cuts across all three.

Ireland’s national plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025–2030, launched in November 2025, aims to deliver 300,000 homes by 2030, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable housing supports. Its focus is not only on activating supply, but also on supporting the people most exposed to the housing crisis. At EU level, Ireland wants to build on the work already done by the Danish and Cypriot Presidencies and turn the European Affordable Housing Plan into action.

Two files will be particularly important. The first is the proposed Council Recommendation on fighting housing exclusion, which promotes a housing-led, person-centred and integrated response to homelessness. Ireland aims to secure agreement ahead of its expected adoption by the EPSCO Council in October.

The second is the forthcoming Affordable Housing Act and accompanying recommendation for areas under housing stress. Ireland intends to move the file forward after its expected publication by the European Commission in September. An informal meeting of Housing Ministers and ministers responsible for homelessness will also take place in Dublin in November, creating another opportunity to turn growing political attention into coordination between Member States.

Ireland is building more, but demand keeps moving faster

Roslyn Molloy from The Housing Agency brought the discussion back to the reality on the ground.

Ireland completed more than 36,000 homes in 2025, including over 9,000 newly built social homes. Cost-rental delivery is also accelerating, with more than 6,000 homes delivered since the tenure was introduced.

The pressure, however, has not eased. Ireland’s population is growing while households are becoming smaller and more young adults are staying in the family home for longer. More than 61,000 households were on social housing waiting lists in late 2025, while 11,864 adults and 5,583 children were living in emergency accommodation in May 2026.

Affordability remains the central fault line. Median house prices have reached €480,000 in Dublin City, €415,000 in Galway City and €350,000 in Cork City. The response is increasingly broad: cost rental, Housing First, grants to bring vacant homes back into use, apartment viability support and new measures to strengthen security in the private rental sector.

Ireland’s cost-rental model attracted particular attention. Rents are based on the cost of delivering, managing and maintaining homes rather than on market prices, offering a more stable option for middle-income households locked out of both homeownership and social housing.

Housing Europe’s research has helped frame the debate

This was not Housing Europe’s first deep dive into Ireland’s housing system. Housing Europe Observatory‘s 2023 report Delivering on Housing in Ireland examined the country’s housing challenges in a European context, while the State of Housing in Europe 2025 provided an updated country profile tracking recent policy developments and market trends. More recently, Housing Europe published Unlocking Potential, a comparative study of Approved Housing Body models across the EU, highlighting how financing frameworks and the statistical treatment of investment affect the sector’s capacity to deliver homes. Housing Europe has also explored Ireland’s expanding cost-rental model, increasingly recognised as an innovative approach to improving affordability. Together, these publications show that Ireland is not only facing challenges shared across Europe but is also emerging as a source of policy solutions that can inform the EU housing agenda.

The issue creeping beneath the surface

For Donal McManus of the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH) – a Housing Europe member – the biggest European obstacle may be one that rarely attracts headlines – how investment in social and affordable housing is classified.

His message was direct: “Social and affordable housing should be treated as long-term investment, not simply as public debt.” That accounting question has major consequences. It affects how much governments and housing providers can invest, how quickly projects can move and whether emerging housing associations in countries such as Czechia and Hungary can grow with confidence.

This is not only an Irish issue, it runs across Europe and could be tackled directly by the European Commission.

Donal McManus also called for greater certainty around Social Climate Plans, more support for ELENA programmes, continued investment through the European Investment Bank and Cohesion Funds, and progress on the European recommendation addressing homelessness.

He said that Europe is already exchanging ideas more actively. Cost rental is travelling across borders, housing Ministers are meeting more regularly, “housing has become an Europeanised problem”. The next step is to match that exchange of ideas with investment, coordination and rules that enable delivery.

From political attention to homes

The European housing debate has changed quickly and Ireland’s Presidency can push that change further. The real measure of success for Housing Europe will not be the number of meetings held or files discussed but whether Europe creates the conditions for mission-oriented providers to build more, renovate faster and offer people secure homes they can afford.