Financing the Golden Age of Irish Social Housing, 1932-1956 (and the dark ages which followed)

The period from the early 1930s to mid-1950s was the golden age of social housing in the Republic of Ireland. During these three decades social housing accounted for 55 per cent of all new housing built and the proportion of Irish households accommodated in this sector increased to an all-time high of 18.6 per cent by 1961. Unlike the rest of Western Europe the expansion of Ireland’s social housing sector did not coincide with a golden age of welfare state expansion. Indeed the Ireland’s social housing sector began to stagnate and contract just as its welfare state commenced a late blossoming in the 1970s. This paper looks to financing arrangements to shed light on these atypical patterns of social housing sector expansion and contraction. The argument offered here is that initially the arrangements used to fund social housing in Ireland were very similar to those used in the other Western European countries which constructed large social housing sectors during the twentieth century. However, as this century wore on, the influence of the socio-political pressures which has constrained the growth of the wider Irish welfare state came to bear on the model used to fund social housing and precipitated the end of its golden age.