Two years ago, I secured an apartment in Dublin through a gay dating app. I was desperate and there was a housing shortage in Ireland so I was prepared to ignore safety concerns to get a roof over my head. ‘You must be used to this in London’, Irish friends would say to me. But I was not.
In London if you’re happy to compromise on cost or location, there are plenty of rooms available. In Dublin you can double or triple your budget or look further afield and still not find a place. There are some very high-spec, new-build apartments in the city’s docklands (its ‘tech hub’), which can cost around €3,000 for a two-bed, and are designed primarily for expats and American tech workers.
So, when I saw a friendly-looking face advertising a room on a dating app, I took my chance. Surely you can’t blame me. It worked out okay. But two years on from my experience, things haven’t really changed. People don’t feel better off, there is still a housing crisis, the cost of living is still a concern.
Ireland’s politics is different to when I lived there, but unchanged from recent history. In 2022, Sinn Fein were expected to win the next general election. Now, as we have seen this weekend, they’re winning 20 per cent of the vote like Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. Fine Gael dispatched of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and replaced him with the fresh-faced Simon Harris. Harris seems to have defied the odds, and will likely extend Fine Gael’s 14 years in government in coalition with Fianna Fail and one or more of Ireland’s smaller parties.
It’s unclear what any of the main parties would do to fix the challenges the country faces. Like much of the western world, the cost-of-living crisis has dominated the election with rising prices and a housing shortage squeezing living costs. Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have ended up with very similar policies on housing: they’ve all committed to building at least 300,000 new homes, with a focus on affordable housing.
Debate around the cost-of-living crisis masks a curious thing: Ireland is considerably richer than many of its European peers. It has one of the highest growth rates in Europe and one of the highest rates of GDP per capita. Still, Irish people don’t feel better off – they see rising prices, housing shortages, public sector problems, and wonder why these things aren’t better if they’re being told by the government that the country is so rich.
Nevertheless, Ireland’s economic headroom explains in part how Fine Gael have been able to remain in contention for ‘winning’ the election. Harris unveiled a pre-election giveaway budget, and the handouts to almost all parts of society have softened the cost-of-living crisis as an election issue.
Immigration was also expected to be a key issue in this election campaign due to high numbers moving to Ireland, and high-profile cases of immigrants crossing the Northern Irish border. However, it actually remained low on voters’ concerns, partly because Harris took what was seen as a firm but fair, and not extreme, position on the issue since becoming Taoiseach.
It appears, then, that the centre ground of Irish politics has held; softening the salience of the cost-of-living crisis and neutralising immigration has meant Harris has kept his party in contention. But unless Irish people feel better off in five years, the government may have just delayed punishment by the electorate, rather than avoided it.
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