RORY O’DONNELL National Economic and Social Council and National Economic and Social Development Office

This paper presents the key findings from a 2004 NESC study on the Irish housing system, Housing in Ireland: Performance and Policy. The paper begins by identifying the anxieties and concerns people have about housing. These cluster into three broad concerns: the stability of the housing market, the degree of inequality in housing opportunities experienced during the housing boom and the sustainability of settlement patterns and neighbourhoods developed in the past decade. An interpretation of the housing boom is developed to assess these concerns. It is argued that a large increase in house prices was inevitable given economic and demographic trends. The supply response was very dynamic but was considerably weaker in and near Dublin and other cities. The weaker supply response in Dublin and other cities was a product of systems of both planning and infrastructure. There was insufficient investment in infrastructure to support high-quality, high-density development. The analysis confirms anxieties about inequalities in the distribution of housing opportunities and also confirms concerns about the sustainability of new settlement patterns and neighbourhoods. The core policy challenges identified are the need to achieve high-quality, sustainable neighbourhoods and to provide a more effective range of supports to those households that fall below the affordability threshold. The paper examines the dynamics of the land market and recommends long-term land use strategies and sufficient active land management to ensure delivery of both private and social housing