Getting a Gaff

Individualism vs Collective Cooperation

Monopoly is a real-estate trading board game where players aim to bankrupt their opponents by acquiring properties, building houses and hotels, and collecting rent from other players who land on their spaces. Its just a game, but underneath the hood, it tries to teach us something about real life. Distribution of a nations wealth matters...

Lets imagine you have finished work and its your birthday. Imagine you have 30 euro and you want to go to a steak restaurant for your birthday dinner, but the cheapest steak costs 35 euro. Now imagine your friend Simon wants to join. He also wants a steak but also only has 30 euro. Simon mentions that Jeremy would like to come too, but Jeremy only has 25 euros to spend. Individually going to the restaurant, none of you is getting a steak. But if two of you go to the restaurant you can split a steak. And if all three of you go into the restaurant you can get two steaks between three. Its true, Jeremy is getting a bit more bang for his buck than the other two, and we all have that friend who will point that out, but you get the idea.
When we pay taxes, we fund services that everybody gets to benefit from. We can fund things like swimming pools, better libraries, football pitches, more doctors, childcare spaces, gardaí and community centres for teenagers. But sometimes, when we prioritize the protection of private wealth above all else, these services start to suffer from a lack of investment or worse, public squalor.

When we are planning for our future, or buying a house, we tend to look at the game quite individualistically in terms of how we can win, or get ahead. Coming back to our friends Simon and Jeremy, society has told us they are our competitors. But instead of all three of you waking up every morning and soldiering on with the game from where you left off, it can be helpful, particularly if things arent going so well for any of you, to take a pause sometimes and look at the rules of the game you are playing. You might be surprised to see that they have changed.

Features of Irelands housing system

No Public Housing Body

Neoliberal governments left housing to the private commercial market instead of building homes for its people.

Lack of affordable supply

Build-to-Rent Favouritism

Developers avoid stamp duty while scooping up land and apartments, prioritising investor profits.

Locks potential buyers out

Tax Cuts for developers and inheritances

Inflationary tax cuts and higher thresholds for inheritances hurts meritocracy

Pushes prices upward

Limited Additional Stamp Duty on bulk home purchases

In the UK buyers now pay an additional 5% stamp duty after buying a second or third home. This is up from 3% previously.

Fewer homes for first time buyers

Low density Urban Sprawl

Since 2017, first time buyers are increasingly moving out of the urban centres into areas with no suitable public transport system.

Families/teens disconnected from services, forced into second car ownerhsip

The Ladies’ Land League

The Ladies’ Land League was founded in 1881 as a women’s auxiliary to the Irish National Land League, stepping in when the male leadership was imprisoned. Under the direction of Anna Parnell, it became one of the most effective political organizations of its era and at its peak had 321 branches in Ireland alone.

The League managed finances, organized relief for evicted tenants, supported prisoners’ families, and continued the movement’s call for fair land reform. Its members defied Victorian norms, and had success in demanding fair rents & fixity of tenure (security against eviction) through tactics like rent strikes and boycotts.

Despite immense success, the Ladies’ Land League was eventually pressured to disband. Still, it stands as a landmark in Irish women’s history — a moment when women, despite not yet having the right to vote, proved themselves as capable and courageous political actors.

How We Got Here

Baby boomers and many of those born before 1980 acquired property in a post-war age of large scale property construction, social housing expansion and wage increases. These elements are now gone. Since the 1990s, Ireland has built very little public housing. This was coupled with stagnant wage growth particularly since the recession, low corporation tax. That was not an accident — it was a deliberate political decision, to leave housing to the private market. The result? Hundreds of thousands of adults now live in their childhood bedrooms, unable to afford a home of their own in what is supposedly one of the richest countries in the world.

This has been going on for years on end, and while some modest improvements have occurred in areas of renter protections, and the legislating for cost rental, the situation is still massively unfair. Below, a short documentary of the situation way back in 2017? Do you think it has improved since?

The Generational Divide

A Generational Wealth Gap A 2025 OECD study highlights the growing divide: across advanced economies, homeowner wealth now makes up the bulk of national wealth. But younger generations are being locked out. Baby Boomers benefited from rising wages, stable jobs, and accessible mortgage credit. Millennials and younger generations face slower wage growth, precarious employment, higher rents, and much higher entry prices. Even those who manage to buy often do so by taking on unprecedented levels of debt. One of the clearest metrics is ownership equity by age — how much of their home people in their 30s actually own, compared to previous generations. The difference is staggering.

When grocery prices rise 3%, it’s headline news. But when house prices — a core cost of living — rise 10% in a year, it barely makes the front page. That’s because in our current system, homes are no longer just places to live — they are wealth commodities, and wages simply havent kept up.

A fair wage for workers

We don’t want our real-life social workers, teachers etc. to end up like Edna Krabappel from The Simpsons, who had her own parody board game to make ends meet.

Teachers already do so much more than just teach—they mentor, update course material, provide feedback, run extracurriculars, handle emotional and social support, and engage with their communities.

Expecting all of that on a salary that doesn’t cover living costs forces them into “side hustles,” which detract from their core mission. Any full-time employee engaging in such work should do so out of choice, not necessity.

—RIP, Marcia Wallace

Profits for investors first, sky-high rents for tenants, and little path to ownership.

Profits Before People

In recent years, Ireland has introduced legislation that made the state significantly more attractive to build-to-rent developers. This did not simply fail to help young people buy homes — it actively pushed them further out of the market. The Urban Regeneration and Housing Act 2015 created a dedicated planning designation for Build-to-Rent schemes. While pitched as a way to increase housing supply, it streamlined planning in a way that gave these projects major advantages over traditional owner-occupier housing. Developers could build faster, with fewer constraints, in locations where ordinary buyers were already struggling to compete. The Act also changed Part V obligations, which traditionally required developers to provide a portion of land or units for social housing. After 2015, Build-to-Rent developers were given more flexibility: many could meet their obligations through financial contributions rather than providing actual homes. This shift reduced the number of affordable or social units delivered within these developments — again benefiting investors, not communities.