At Trinity, a quiet crisis is unfolding. Final-year students are finishing degrees not with excitement, but with an escape plan. Graduation no longer signals a leap into Irish working life — for many, it means booking a one-way flight and starting over in a city where housing doesn’t swallow half their income — or somewhere that, at the very least, feels worth the price tag, with better transport, services, opportunities, and overall quality of life.
As part of our final-year capstone project, we set out to understand why so many young Irish professionals are leaving. Our survey of 128 highly-educated individuals aged 18–26 revealed that nearly 80 percent are considering emigration within the next five years. The one issue named above all others: housing. It’s not just rent — it’s the exhaustion of scrambling for a place to live, the insecurity of short leases, and a creeping sense that Ireland simply isn’t designed for them anymore.
Interviews with Trinity students and graduates confirmed what we feared: people who love this country are being pushed out. “Life is too short to be waiting for the Irish government to do something,” one interviewee told us from a rental in London. Others echoed the same frustration — a sense of no home meaning no future here in Ireland. Many students have already watched friends, siblings or cousins emigrate — not for adventure, but because they had to.
While some Dublin-based students may still live at home with their parents, that should not be the only solution. At 22, 23, 24 years old, independence is not a luxury — it’s part of becoming an adult. The ability to move out, build a life, live on your own terms — it matters. In Ireland, 58 percent of 25–29-year-olds still live with their parents. In Finland, that number is just 7 percent. In Denmark, it’s 5. The EU average is 41 percent. We’re not just falling behind — we’re leaving an entire generation in limbo.
And yet, when Tánaiste Micheál Martin visited the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, housing was laughed off as a good problem to have — a reflection of our “booming economy”. To us, this is no laughing matter. Irish housing costs are more than double the EU average. What’s booming is not opportunity, but desperation. If this is a success, it’s one we cannot afford.
But this is not inevitable. It is the product of political inertia and policy failure — and it can be reversed. We studied how other countries have confronted similar crises and found tangible solutions. In Denmark, over 20 percent of housing is rented at cost by non-profit associations, accessible regardless of income. In Germany, renters have indefinite leases, eviction protections, and strict rent caps. In Vienna, nearly two-thirds of the population lives in publicly built, mixed-income housing where rent is tied to income, not speculation. These are not pipe dreams. They are real policies, in real cities, that prioritise people over profit.
Ireland can do the same — but we need reforms that are bold, achievable, and tailored to our economic and political landscape. After months of analysis and consultation, including with experts from Threshold, we’ve narrowed our policy recommendations to three that vary in ambition, affordability, and ease of implementation.
First, Ireland urgently needs a national rent register and reference rent system. Unlike most European countries, we have no transparent record of how much properties are rented for — allowing hidden charges and unjustified hikes to run rampant. A rent register would provide the data needed to enforce caps and introduce a reference rent system, where rents are pegged to local averages with a fixed limit on annual increases. This model, already in place in Germany, would cost little to implement but deliver immediate relief for renters, who today are often left defenceless in the face of landlord discretion. It would also close off loopholes like “renoviction” — evicting tenants under the guise of refurbishment to reset the rent.
Second, the government must accelerate development of cost-rental housing on public land. This model, seen in Vienna and the Netherlands, builds high-quality homes that rent for 25–30 percent of a tenant’s income — permanently insulated from market spikes. A ringfenced National Housing Fund — potentially backed by state borrowing, windfall corporate taxes, or EU investment — could deliver thousands of these homes each year. Threshold’s Gareth Redmond pointed us to France’s ‘Livret A’ savings account: a tax-free, state-backed investment channel through which ordinary citizens fund public housing via a national public bank. Ireland’s record household savings present a similar opportunity. If we used them to build housing instead of hoarding them in private banks, we could turn passive capital into real homes for real people.
Third, Ireland must finally embrace cooperative and community-led housing. This model — common in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany — puts ownership and control in the hands of residents, not landlords or investors. In co-ops, people pay into a shared mortgage, build equity, and manage their own housing democratically. These communities are stable, affordable, and built to last. They also offer young people a new path to secure housing — ownership without a €60,000 deposit or 30-year mortgage. To make this possible, we need legal recognition of co-ops, start-up grants, access to public land, and a cultural shift toward collective housing models. Trinity itself could lead the way by hosting pilot projects on university-owned land, giving graduates an alternative to exploitative rental cycles.
We’re not naïve — none of this is easy. But young people are paying record rents, deferring independence, and abandoning Ireland altogether. These policies represent a spectrum of action: a rent register could be done in months. A cost-rental expansion could transform the housing landscape in a decade. Community-led housing could change how we think about homes altogether.
We wrote this article not just as researchers, but as students staring down the same choices as our peers. We’ve spent years investing in our education, our country, and our future. But without secure housing, none of it matters. We’ve been invited into Leinster House by Fine Gael representatives to present our housing policy reforms — a small but encouraging step toward meaningful dialogue. We hope others in power will follow their lead. What we need now is political courage and public pressure — and the belief that this country is still worth fighting for.
Because when our generation starts leaving, it’s not just a housing crisis anymore. It’s a future crisis.
If you wish to keep the conversation going or share your stories, please reach out to our Instagram: @nohomenofutureire. There, we share findings from our research, powerful personal stories, and the shocking stats that rarely make it into government speeches.
