One fun thing about Ireland is that building homes in the countryside is nearly illegal, unless you have "local needs" (aka your parents are from there). It's a de-facto xenophobic "Irish people only" building rule, and the EU has ruled it illegal, yet it remains, because the Irish planning system is a reasonable contender for the worst possible way to plan your cities and towns.
The planning system here certainly has lots of problematic aspects, but making it difficult to build one-off homes in the countryside isn't one of them. As a housing solution, it's hugely inefficient and worse, it spoils the landscape. When the practice went unchecked in earlier decades, it lead to what was dubbed "bungalow blight".
The comment "With UBI, people can more easily move from expensive cities if housing is not affordable, and then rents and prices must adjust" suggested people leave expensive cities. In Ireland this generally means moving to rural areas and commuting, though there are also smaller towns you could commute from.
Indeed, the problem is that Ireland makes it damn near impossible to build anything anywhere, still imposes parking minimums, still uses _their own_ failure to build infrastructure as a reason to deny people homes, still has many, many planners who almost seem personally insulted by the idea that you might want a house with "eaves" or literally anything different from what already exists (ironically they're hellbent on making sure nothing is as interesting as e.g. Eyeries village), and still despises anything that isn't sitting on a giant carbon-intensive blob of concrete.
The _excellent_ IrishVernacular.com had a great website showing how to build a modern, comfortable house for 25k (make it 50k now with inflation), but when I talked to planners in Offaly (yech) about the idea of a pier foundation or a metal roof they got visibly angry. (The site is gone but archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210216212333/https://www.irish... ) Interestingly, metal roofs are cheaper and last longer (and can look perfectly nice, I'm not talking about tin roofs here). But planners are threatened by anything that makes housing more affordable.
As far as the "landscape" - the whole country is a giant meat factory swimming in cattle feces; the landscape was ruined centuries ago. If you're curious, the book "Whittled Away" is a really good examination of this, and how ecologically barren Ireland really is - https://iwt.ie/product/whittled-away/. And rural homes don't need to be car-dependent monstrosities, I made a video about how we could improve active transport in rural areas at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba7xHUdeew (of course, even the greens think bikes are only toys outside the city, and my cllrs from FF/FG/SF practically laughed at me when I suggested bike infrastructure where we lived in the midlands).
Of course, the real galling bit is that Ireland has peak "rules for thee and not for me" energy, by saying you can opt out of all that so long as you're a true native son and have parents from the area (the EU has rightly pointed out that this is discriminatory, but Ireland just... breaks the law. And nothing happens) - https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/locals-only-planning-r... . So apparently one-off houses are great, but only for culchies.
> As far as the "landscape" - the whole country is a giant meat factory swimming in cattle feces; the landscape was ruined centuries ago.
Love this comment so much. And it's true!
I grew up in Ireland and was immersed in the "everything in Ireland is the best" mentality. I think it was when I started regularly visiting the Hudson Valley in New York, which is mostly still wooded, that I really realized the "countryside" in Ireland is just manmade. It's not natural. The whole island was trees.
My understanding is that you've left Ireland; hope you're making your peace with the problems of the country now that you don't have to deal with them as much!
I live in the Netherlands, which has plenty of issues in its own right, but it's been a better place to raise kids. Finding a place to live here was easier, which is kind of insane considering how bad the housing crisis is in NL, and my kids can bike to school safely.
I really like Ireland. I think it's an amazing place. But it's really, really, really badly run. And it seems like most policymaking (like this, or rent control, or help to buy, etc) was built on vibes instead of logic.
