Systemic Transformation or Scheme Adaptation? Transferring Affordable Housing Policies Between Austria and Ireland

Drawing on policy transfer literature, this paper examines efforts to transfer the cost rental model of affordable housing provision from Austria to Ireland. In examines the motivation for this transfer, the similarities between the Irish and Austrian versions of this model, its effectiveness in the Irish context and the factors that shaped these outcomes. This analysis reveals that as the transfer process progressed the differences between the Irish and Austrian models increased steadily. Many of the adaptations made during the transfer process were necessary to successfully and speedily establish this model in Ireland, where it has provided a successful short-term response to housing unaffordability. However, these adaptations also meant that what had originally envisaged as an ambitious ‘systemic transfer’ (i.e. transfer of the full Austrian cost rental system to drive systemic transformation of Ireland’s ‘dual’ rental market into a ‘unitary’ system, in Kemeny’s conceptualisation), turned into a ‘scheme transfer (i.e. the transfer of parts of the Austrian system to establish an intermediate rental scheme in Ireland). Furthermore, these adaptations reduced the long-term financial sustainability of Ireland’s version of cost renting. On this basis the paper reflects on the challenges of transferring complex, multi-dimensional housing systems compared to singledimensional housing schemes.