Housing crisis - Incentives needed for key workers

IT is a frightening scenario that key groups like the gardaí, primary school teachers, nurses, and firefighters cannot afford to buy an average house in most Irish cities.

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given the scale of the housing crisis, but the findings engender a sense of shock nevertheless. At one stage, the phenomenon of ‘unaffordability’ was confined to Dublin, but it is now spreading inexorably across the country.

That much is borne out by the Halifax survey of house prices, between March 2003 and March 2006, which shows how crucial public sector workers are being priced out of the market in the cities of Galway, Cork, Waterford and Dublin.