Search Results for 'Johnny Gannon'

On July 1, Ireland takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the next six months, and for the first time, housing will sit near the top of that agenda. That is not a coincidence, and it is not just an Irish story. Across Europe, the conversation about housing shortages has shifted. It is no longer framed primarily as a social issue. It is now being framed as an economic competitiveness issue, and that change in framing is hugely significant.

We are standing at the crossroads. That is the only honest way to describe where Ireland’s property market stands in mid-2026, caught between the immovable forces of scarcity, grinding construction inflation, and an affordability ceiling that is closing in on an entire generation of would-be buyers. Something has to give. The question is what and when.

Six weeks ago in this column, I described the approval of the N6 Galway City Ring Road as potentially the most consequential planning decision for Galway’s housing market in a generation. I meant every word of it. The relief felt across the region when An Coimisiún Pleanála finally issued that decision in April was real and it was earned, the product of more than 30 years of planning, campaigning, legal battles, and hard money spent.

Property insights by Johnny Gannon, Fair Deal Property

The latest rental figures showing another sharp increase in Irish rents are far more than just another headline. They represent a structural turning point in the Irish housing market and the predictable outcome of poorly conceived interventions in the private rental sector. When government begins to interfere heavily in the operation of markets, particularly through politically motivated reforms, the law of unintended consequences inevitably comes into play. Capital markets, landlords, investors, and developers will always respond rationally in order to protect their own interests. That is not ideology; it is simply the reality of how free markets operate.

The Irish construction sector is experiencing a fundamental shift that deserves far more attention than it's currently receiving. After years of post-pandemic recovery and ambitious national housing targets, we're now witnessing a slowdown driven not by falling demand — demand remains exceptionally strong — but by something far more problematic: the economics of development are breaking down.

To understand why housing in Ireland remains so stubbornly scarce, you first have to understand what the Irish economy is actually built to do.

Cost rental has quickly emerged as one of the most significant policy tools in Ireland's attempt to fix a housing system that has been under severe strain for well over a decade. Aimed squarely at middle-income earners, the cohort that earns too much to qualify for social housing but not enough to comfortably buy, it is designed to offer rents based on the actual cost of delivering and managing homes, rather than the volatile and increasingly unaffordable dynamics of the open market.

Property insights by Johnny Gannon, Fair Deal Property

Property insights by Johnny Gannon, Fair Deal Property Galway Auctioneers & Estate Agents.