Irish country-pop singer, CMAT, recently released a new song “Euro-Country” in which she depicts life in Ireland since the Celtic Tiger and the Crash. The song is beautiful and haunting, reminding us of the legacy of the Boom and the Bust-era and how it, to this day, has its grip on every aspect of our lives. The most striking of her lyrics is:
“All the big boys, all the Bertie’s,
All the envelopes, yeah, they hurt me
I was twelve when the das started killing themselves all around me
And it was normal, building houses
That stay empty even now, yeah
And no one says it out loud but I know it can be better if we hound it”
We are 17 years on from the financial crash of 2008 and yet we are left with the marks of it to this day. The planning system during the Celtic Tiger was riddled with corruption, with “brown envelope” briberies for planning permission that arguably has not fully gone away even today—stories about investigations into An Bord Pleanála and possible corruption and lack of transparency are as recent as 2023. It was normal to build housing estates faster than people could buy during this time, and it is normal that these ghost estates of today are relics of what was. In Donegal and Mayo, the collapse of the housing crisis was not just abstract but quite literal with their houses crumbling away after being built with poor quality materials during the height of the Celtic Tiger [1].
The suicide rate amongst men rose 57% by the end of 2012 when compared to pre-recession rates, with the greatest rise in men ages 25-44, closely followed by men ages 45-64, supporting the depressing memory CMAT experiences on the fathers around her committing suicide. It is widely agreed that major contributors to these deaths, amongst other things like lack of mental health services, were the seemingly overnight mass unemployment and widespread loss of homes.
The profits made by investors on the back of our crisis only continue to rise through the likes of tax subsidies and discounted land introduced in the wake of the Crash. Deregulation of the housing crisis has led to shortage in supply and increasing rent prices[2], while a substantial number of properties are illegal and have high eviction rates.
The average cost of a second-hand home in Dublin is almost €600,000, well out of reach from the average Dubliner salary of €46,000 [3]. The yearly income needed to qualify for a mortgage of that size (assuming you are a first-time buyer and therefore able to receive a mortgage of 3.5 times your annual salary) would have to be €171,500 either on your own or jointly with a partner. These astronomical prices have given rise to Generation Rent, meaning more people are staying in private rented accommodation and/or staying in the family home much later than pre-recession. Homelessness rates are staggering, with 15,915 reported cases of homelessness as of June 2025 by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
It is not insignificant that CMAT starts her song off with “I went away to come back like a prodigal Christian”. The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) tells the story of a son who asks his father for his inheritance, lives a life of luxury, only to spend it all and crawl back to his father asking to be his father’s servant again. The parable aptly translates to the Celtic Tiger and the Crash (it is worth noting that my colleague, Kevin Hargaden, has written a theological account of this period explicitly built around the parables of Jesus ) with lives of riches dramatically coming to an end, with us practically begging the State to help us. The parable continues with telling us how the older brother to the prodigal son becomes angry with his father, saying:
“Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
For those who feel like they did everything asked by the government—got an education, becomes trades workers, improved the conditions of the country—only to be ignored in a time of need as bailouts were handed to the wealthiest among us … the resentment is not hard to grasp.
Connected to this idea of being left by the State is the Parable of New Cloth on Old Garment (Matthew 9:16-17):
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
The collapse of the Celtic Tiger should have reasonably prompted reflection on whether the cycle of boom and bust is how we want to continue as a society. But in the midst of firefighting the debt, no one pressed that issue. The government slapped temporary plasters on to the economy and housing market by wooing foreign capital into the market after the bailouts of the Irish banks, thinking it would jumpstart our housing market again. Little did they know—or maybe, little did they care—that this would ultimately become the primary reason for our current crisis.
The Parable points us towards a solution, however: new problems require new solutions, and through that we are preserved and made safe.
While the lyrics to Euro-Country are not written in vain and echo the sentiments felt across the island, we also desperately cling on to the hope that a change is possible. CMAT says “no one will say it out loud”, but we will: we know things can be better if we consistently push the government into making decisions for the people, not for profiteers. Tangible solutions are possible. The government can acquire land legally through the likes of compulsory purchase orders (see our previous blog post on the Kenny Report here), increasing social housing production and reducing land speculation, ultimately decreasing costs of homes and rental prices. These are not pipe-dream actions; these are real changes that would dramatically improve our housing conditions across tenure types.
[1] An investigation done by the Irish government from 2016-2017 found mica to be the cause of collapsing homes. However, a study done by Leemann et. Al (2023) found the real cause to be pyrrhotite to be the cause. Pyrrhotite is still a very weak material and should not be used in the construction of homes.
[2] Nationally, rent prices have increased 106% from 2010-2024 (Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, 2024)
[3] CSO, “Distribution of Earnings by Gender and County 2022“, 2023,
