From tenements to today: How 1926 housing data reflects modern Ireland’s property challenges

New analysis of first Free State census shows enduring housing pressures around supply, affordability, overcrowding, and regional inequality

In the 1920s, large-scale housing developments typically featured small terraced houses with gardens, designed to balance affordability with basic standards of comfort and hygiene.

In a country where housing perennially dominates political debate, the records of the 1926 census offer a rare opportunity to look back — not just at how people lived, but at what kind of housing system Ireland was trying to build a century ago. 

The findings are both distant and familiar. If today’s crisis is defined by scarcity, affordability and political urgency, the Ireland of 1926 was grappling with many of the same pressures — albeit in a very different social and economic landscape.