Greystones, a small coastal town just south of Dublin, was experiencing a particularly rainy end to its November. It seemed that all the visitors had taken refuge in Scéal, a trendy bakery on the marina, on the first floor of a brand-new luxury building. It was serving mouth-watering croissants and even kouign-amann, as if straight out of a Brittany pâtisserie. Simon Harris, the current Taoiseach (prime minister), grew up in Greystones and is the constituency’s MP. The town of gleaming pubs and organic groceries has been one of Dublin’s fastest-growing satellite boroughs in recent years. Its population has jumped by 20% since 2016, with new arrivals mostly middle-class families looking for housing outside a capital that has become too expensive even for high earners.
Over hot drinks, Val Kiernan, 62, her daughter Claudia Crampton, 27, and their friend Colette Nkunda summed up the local problems and those of a large proportion of Irish voters, ahead of the general election on Friday, November 29. Voters will be electing MPs to the Dáil Eireann, the Irish lower house of parliament, currently controlled by a coalition of the two major centrist parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, allied with the Greens. “My main concern is access to healthcare. There aren’t enough doctors and it costs €70 to see a GP. There is a social tariff, but you have to meet strict eligibility criteria,” complained Nkunda, a Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin who has lived in Ireland since 1994.
For Kiernan, the priority is “housing.” “There’s a huge crisis. I live in a three-bedroom house, with two of my four adult children, my youngest son and my eldest daughter, who has just divorced, and her little boy. They don’t have the means to find affordable housing,” complained the employee of Glencree, an NGO specializing in conflict resolution set up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Her daughter Claudia, a musician, spent four years in the Netherlands, “where the housing crisis is less severe than here,” she observed. She returned to Ireland but said she knows “so many young people leaving the country, many for Australia because they can’t find a place to live. I’m renting, but my landlord is selling, and I have to be out by the beginning of next year,” added the young woman anxiously.
Construction came to a screeching halt
A former British colony, the young Republic of Ireland (independent since 1922) was for a long time a poor, rural country. Joining the European Union in 1973, it enjoyed an economic boom, fueled by massive foreign direct investment, which was brought to a halt by the 2008 financial crisis. In recent years, the “Celtic tiger” has been roaring again, with a slight consolidation expected in 2024 and a growth rebound of 4% expected in 2025. This country of 5.2 million inhabitants is one of the richest in the world, by GDP per capita, just behind Luxembourg and Singapore.
You have 74% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
