Ireland’s EU Presidency Must Treat Housing as a Right, Not an Asset

When Ireland assumed the Presidency of the EU Council on 1 July 2026, it did so under the banner of Ní neart go cur le chéile — “strength in unity”. Yet the reality across the EU is one of growing fragmentation, rooted in a structural and systemic housing crisis.

For the next six months, Ireland can steer the European Affordable Housing Plan and help shape the €2 trillion 2028–2034 EU budget. But doing so demands more than bureaucratic stewardship of the legislative agenda or the technocratic processing of the Construction Services Act. It requires a fundamental break from the financialised logic that reduces housing to a tradable asset. It must be recognised that the housing crisis is not only an economic and social challenge: it is the very fuel sustaining far-right extremism across the continent.

To lead effectively, Ireland must alter the EU’s trajectory at a fundamental level, shifting housing from a market obsession back to a vibrant democratic project.

The Irish presidency’s programme treats housing primarily as a competitiveness issue. Initiatives such as the Affordable Housing Act and the Construction Services Act aim to unlock supply and streamline EU financial programmes, while the Housing Simplification Package now in preparation sets out an agenda to accelerate permitting for critical infrastructure and housing.

This sounds pragmatic, but experience demands intense scepticism. Simplification does not always mean deregulation. The last time Irish politicians embraced the narrative of “removing red tape” to boost supply, the country ended up with 32-square-metre studios, the removal of communal and cultural facilities from apartment schemes, and the scrapping of unit-mix restrictions — all in the name of reducing costs and allowing flexibility. Added to this was a planning exemption for modular sheds in back gardens, accompanied by an absence of tenancy rights and only lightly regulated standards. The trend has institutionalised insecure tenancies and substandard living conditions. Simplifying planning and cutting administrative costs cannot become a convenient excuse to abandon basic standards of living.

If the EU Affordable Housing Plan is to succeed, politicians must stop trusting the market blindly. Questioning housing quality is not an attack on business. The Circular Economy Act and the European Grids Package offer genuine opportunities to modernise infrastructure, but they must be anchored in robust standards. Bowing to industry lobbies in the name of competitiveness will not deliver sustainable homes; it will merely scale up the delivery of poor-quality, overpriced units.

What concrete action can Ireland take? It should steer the forthcoming Housing Simplification Package so that it accelerates permitting only for developments that meet strict, pan-European standards of liveability and sustainability. Any reduction in red tape, or access to EU funding, must be tied directly to delivering high-quality homes — not offered as a regulatory concession that maximises speculative yields while citizens face housing exclusion and homelessness.

Combating homelessness

Ireland must lead by example, shifting European policy towards ambitious affordability frameworks and robust tenant protections. Rising homelessness is not “normal”; it is a policy choice, strongly related to treating shelter as a financial instrument rather than a human right.

Member states — including Ireland, which opted out of Article 31 of the Revised European Social Charter on the right to housing — have shrugged off international criticism of their systemic failures to protect tenants. True affordability cannot be dictated by a volatile market. It requires structural mechanisms that guarantee security of tenure and predictable rents, and that shield citizens from abusive practices which undermine tenants’ rights and housing security.

A critical part of this fight is recognising the specific, intersecting vulnerabilities that drive people into homelessness. Housing policy must, for instance, explicitly account for Domestic, Sexual, and Gender-Based Violence (DSGBV). Domestic abuse remains a common pathway into homelessness, yet systemic responses routinely treat emergency refuge as a temporary justice issue rather than a structural housing failure. By adopting housing-led solutions that pair immediate tenant protections with secure, permanent accommodation, the EU can begin to address the root causes of housing deprivation. Without binding European standards on tenant security and affordability, the fight against housing exclusion remains a rhetorical exercise.

One concrete step would be to transform EPOCH — the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness — from a voluntary agreement into a binding framework within the EPSCO Council (Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council). A firm directive along these lines would standardise tenant-security metrics across the bloc and penalise, perhaps financially, countries that use light-touch regulation to facilitate speculative property bubbles.

Reclaiming the democratic project

The debate over housing — and over who gets access to it — is being rapidly colonised by the far right. Narratives that focus on housing fatalism and scarcity strategically scapegoat vulnerable minorities, refugees, and migrants for structural deficits that are, in reality, the direct result of decades of state disinvestment, regulatory abdication, and the active promotion of speculative housing practices. This exclusionary discourse does not emerge from nowhere: it takes root in the fertile soil of democratic anxiety, rising wealth inequality, social exclusion, and the despair of the many locked out of secure housing.

Ireland can use this Presidency to shape an inclusive discourse that actively counters these extremist ideas. To do so, citizens cannot simply be treated as consumers expressing market preferences in a competitive housing space; they must be drawn back into a cohesive political project. By ensuring that cohesion-policy commitments and affordable housing are treated as fundamental rights across the EU, Ireland can demonstrate that democratic institutions remain capable of acting collectively to solve structural crises.

If the Irish Presidency spends the next six months energetically promoting the housing that European households actually need — affordable, secure, and integrated with vital social infrastructure — it can prove that “Ní neart go cur le chéile” is more than a slogan. It can become a viable blueprint for restoring democratic legitimacy and social stability across Europe, and a positive influence well beyond it.