For not even giving his paying customers decent seats, Michael O'Leary was surprisingly generous with his employees. The Ryanair boss regularly irritates people with ideas about how he could squeeze even more money out of his passengers: seats gone, toilets only available at an additional cost, gambling on board. And now this: 25 new houses, red brick, as a gift to our own employees.
It is a kind of private social housing estate, built for millions of euros on the outskirts of Dublin. Just one stop from the airport. When you visit in mid-March, Portuguese cherry laurel and snow roses are blooming in the front gardens, and empty kitchen-living rooms and softly upholstered chairs can still be seen through the large windows. Anyone new to Ryanair will be able to stay here at a reduced price in the future. It's an amazing jump start for young crew members. And an admission: Dublin has now become so expensive that not even pilots can easily live here anymore.
In Ireland you can see what happens when the housing crisis escalates: rents in the city have roughly doubled since 2013. The average rental price for a one-room apartment is currently just under 2,000 euros per month. Consulting firm Deloitte recently named Dublin's rental market the most expensive in Europe. The middle class has long been threatened by this; Thousands of families are homeless. The number of emigration, which has always been an indicator of problems in the country, has recently increased significantly.
Young people are particularly affected: two thirds of all people under 35 living in Dublin still live with their parents. Many people have long since given up on finding a shared room or even a rental apartment. Like Mark Dunne. The 19-year-old wants to become a teacher. He commutes three hours a day to the university from the surrounding area. Every morning he pushes past his parents through the kitchen, waits in front of the bathroom, then heads to university. He doesn't expect that to change in the coming years. Almost all of his friends and acquaintances lived like this today, even the older ones who are already studying for a master's degree or doctorate. Spontaneous visits, dates? Everything is only possible outside or under the eyes of mom and dad.
»The housing shortage is the biggest domestic political issue of our time. The fact that it is not solved affects the younger generations. “The anger is growing,” says Rory Hearne. He is an associate professor of social policy and has been observing Irish housing policy for almost 20 years. His analysis: It is not the Millennials who have become increasingly radicalized, but the conditions in which they live. In surveys, the issue of housing ranks as the most important concern for the population, ahead of inflation and migration. Also because the housing shortage is not just affecting young people, but the entire fabric of society: older Irish people have to share their houses with family members and cannot sell them, which undermines their retirement provision. How could it come to this?
Hearne sees structural reasons for the crisis. Unlike countries like Germany or the Netherlands, Ireland has long relied on home ownership. It has been the self-image of generations that you either build a house or buy it; However, this is no longer an option for younger people due to the increased costs.
At the same time, the rental market is largely deregulated: Ireland still has no law that specifically lists the rights of tenants. There is not even a register of inhabited buildings and their owners. Apartments are therefore, first and foremost, someone's property. A matter of private law.
In the boom phase of the eighties, nineties and early noughties, Ireland became an IT and services paradise and international companies moved into the country because of the tax advantages. They did not create affordable housing. Today, most apartments are owned by small private landlords - or large international real estate funds that work strictly for profit. The construction of social housing, on the other hand, has been neglected under the governments of the past decades, and the compulsory share in construction projects has even been reduced. Instead of building social housing or buying it for this purpose, people were persuaded to rent expensive apartments for decades. A “political failure,” as Hearne believes. Even an emergency measure passed by the government no longer helps much: the poorest people are now granted a state rent subsidy of 25 percent. But what's the point if the costs increase every year?
The effects of the uncontrolled housing policy are sometimes dramatic: Last year, despite record employment, there were 3,900 homeless families in Ireland, more than at the time of the Great Hunger in the 19th century. A new record. The aid organization Threshold used to target single men, often with drug problems - today it is young people, families and migrant workers. “The biggest risk of homelessness in Ireland is rented accommodation,” says managing director John Mark McCafferty. "The problem cuts across all levels." Among other things, Threshold helps a number of families who have been staying in run-down hotels for years to avoid ending up on the streets.
Out of necessity and anger, so-called tenant unions have now emerged, in which younger people in particular come together. With chain emails and calls, they defend themselves against what they see as greedy landlords and unlawful behavior. Last year alone, 54 evictions were averted in Dublin, says Helen Moynihan, spokeswoman for the Community Action Tenants Union. One every week. Moynihan is calling for an eviction moratorium and a cap on rent increases. Landlords call them “criminals and cowboys who don’t respect the law.”
The excesses of the crisis seem to prove her right: activists report that there are now nine-month contracts so that tenants can be replaced with tourists in the summer. The number of fraudsters who use fake offers to steal money is also increasing. In the past few months, various scandals have become public: landlords offered their living space in exchange for sex, others monitored private rooms.
In his home country of Mexico, Salvador Chaubec, 39, worked as an SAP-certified security expert in the IT industry. Chaubec says he knew he would have to start over in Dublin and that it wouldn't be easy. He has no problem working in two restaurants at the same time, six days a week. »But I would never have believed that people lived like this here.«
Even in his first apartment, he lived almost exclusively with immigrants, most of whom were academics like him. At first he was surprised that he didn't get the rental agreement back. Then he discovered a camera in the kitchen. He wrote to the landlord on WhatsApp. A day later the termination without notice came, shortly afterwards six of the landlord's representatives were in the apartment, first dismantling the room door and then the bed. They then changed the code on the door and threatened all of the roommates with dismissal if they helped Chaubec. Finally the landlord agreed to let him sleep on the floor for another two weeks. SPIEGEL has evidence of Chaubec's account.
"I didn't know something like that could happen to someone in Europe," says Chaubec. With the support of Threshold, he is now taking action against his now well-known ex-landlord, and a hearing will take place shortly. He now lives in a new apartment with six other compatriots. There are no cameras, but he shares the room with a roommate. Black mold grows on the walls, yet everyone here pays 650 euros a month. Chaubec sees this as an improvement.
Due to their vulnerable situation, migrants are particularly at risk of becoming victims of fraudsters and dubious traders. Meanwhile, the pressure is also increasing from another direction: in recent months, the government, which has fallen into difficulties, has repeatedly linked the housing shortage with immigration. One night at the end of December, several new asylum accommodations burned down. "They're trying to find a scapegoat before the elections," says housing expert Hearne.
Hearne has now entered politics himself, running in the European elections for the Social Democrats, a progressive split from the Irish Labor Party. For his country, he is calling for a construction offensive for at least 15,000 apartments annually and a moratorium on rent increases. His party could speculate on a coalition with Sinn Fein. The once IRA-affiliated party, long controversial for its role in the Northern Ireland conflict, discovered the political potential of the housing crisis early on and now consistently focuses on social issues. In surveys, she is currently ahead by double digits with her new carer image, particularly clearly among young voters. A victory in the 2025 elections could herald a historic change - the two major current governing parties have taken turns leading the country since 1937.
Back to the outskirts of the city, to the Ryanair terraced houses. Could those who are currently setting up everything here still be able to afford the rent in this area? A young man in a white shirt stands at a limousine and introduces himself as the person responsible for the Ryanair project. He is 26, he says. He's just waiting for the curtains. Could he afford a house here privately? Friendly laughter. "Absolutely no way."
However, the Ryanair pilots shouldn't be too happy too soon: Four to six of them should move into each house and anyone who has lived here for a year has to get out again - back to the open market.
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