Ghost estates special report: Giving up on unfinished estates as solution to housing crisis

There are far fewer barren estates around the country, writes Seán McCártaigh but the idea of them as a solution to the housing crisis has been abandoned too.

It is a measure of the scale of the current housing crisis that the potential for so-called “ghost estates” to be part of the solution is something of a footnote in the Government’s masterplan to tackle the problem.

Whether it is also an indicator of the relative success of the housing authorities in removing the visible spectre of unfinished developments from the countryside is perhaps less clear.