Irish Examiner view: Hard statistics by which we measure our lives
The number of homeless people in the State now stands at almost 17,000, including 5,321 children. Picture: iStock
In his polymathic work, , Italian historian Umberto Eco speculated on the human appetite for assembling data and making it comprehensible.
The example chosen to illustrate his point is Homer’s catalogue of ships from the opening of .
In Ireland, we are no less hungry for numbers than the ancient Greeks. The last week of 2025 and the start of 2026 abound with the compilation of all manner of listings — the “top 100 songs” of the year; “20 books to watch out for”; “50 great concerts”.
All establish tidy catalogues by which we can measure and modulate our lives.
But there are more serious statistics, and not a day passes without them increasing in volume. Leading the latest is a further worrying confirmation of the stasis in the national housing market, where the supply of homes coming to sale has to double to meet demand.
On December 1, 2025, there were just 11,551 second-hand homes for sale countrywide. The average for the period covering 2015-2019 was 26,000 homes for sale.
The consequences, including relentless upward pressure on prices, continue to play out and include — but are not limited to — rising rents, overcrowding, and homelessness.
The number of homeless people in the State now stands at almost 17,000, including 5,321 children. These figures do not include those guests surfing on the sofas of friends and acquaintances, rough sleepers, those in domestic violence refuges, or in international protection accommodation.
This is fertile ground for right-of-centre political movements, and it is a subject which is likely to be with us all year long.
The new year debate has already been dominated by it due to comments from Tánaiste Simon Harris.
If housing continues to look like an intractable challenge, it is matched by the depressing increase in deaths on the Republic’s roads. 2025 recorded the highest number in almost a decade — 190 — if you include incidents in carparks and non public highways.
Within this melancholy toll, it is to be noted that more than half of the fatalities occurred on high-speed roads with speed limits of 80km/h and above.
Similarly, more than 50% took place between Fridays and Sundays. This is telling us something about our behaviours and our speed limits.
These remain too high.
Of equal concern is the red flag from the Road Safety Authority about the high rate of dangerously defective cars under our control. Official figures show that almost 133,000 vehicles — a record level of one in 13 — were classified as “fail dangerous” in their NCT tests.
The overall pass rate for the full test also fell below 50% for the first time in five years.
This is a reprehensibly and irresponsibly high total of unroadworthy hardware travelling along our streets and carriageways.
If we are looking, Ian Dury-style, for reasons to be cheerful, we can celebrate the fact that registrations of new electric vehicles rose by 35% in Ireland in 2025.
This means that, in motoring terms, we surpassed the annual Climate Action Plan targets. Or give a cheer that our overseas offices in the Department of Foreign Affairs were able to assist some 2,000 cases where Irish citizens needed help in 2025.
Amid all these datasets who, you might ask, is worrying about the rich?
The answer is that they are doing very nicely, with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index noting that the wealthiest 500 added a record $2.2tn (€1.9tn) to their treasure troves in 2025.
All the usual suspects (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Australian rare earths and metals billionaire Gina Rinehart) are on the list, and it’s good to see the green jersey represented in the shape of the Collison brothers from Limerick. They saw a net worth of $9.37bn (€8bn) each, a rise of $2.2bn on the same period last year.
Those people who champion what is known as 'trickle-down economics' must be thrilled. The rest of us can’t wait. Let the good times roll.
The catastrophic blaze which took the lives of at least 40 people celebrating New Year’s Eve in a bar in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana strikes a particular chord in Ireland, where the memory of a devastating nightclub fire is deeply etched in the collective memory.
The inferno in the Swiss ski resort is believed to have started when sparklers — some commentators describe them as Roman candles — set into bottles of Champagne set ablaze the ceiling of the basement.
Foam cladding is suspected of being the main accelerant for the conflagration which spread rapidly.
The French co-owners of Le Constellation also face questions about the fire escapes.
Around 50 people are being sent to European countries for treatment in specialist burn units.
Some have had to be placed in artificial comas, and several remain in critical condition.
It is 45 years since an inferno engulfed the Stardust nightclub in Artane, resulting in the deaths of 48 young people.
For many Irish people of a certain generation, the scenes in the aftermath of the Swiss fire are reminiscent of the devastating pictures that emanated from the aftermath of the Stardust fire.
We know all too well that the lasting impact of a tragedy like this extends far beyond the days and weeks following the event. So many lives have been destroyed and changed utterly.
We can only hope that the families and victims of the fire in Le Constellation do not have to endure the lengthy pursuit for answers like the Stardust families did.
Anyone who attends , cinema’s first hot ticket of 2026, will notice a significant difference between the film and the stage version, both of which have sprung from the creative imagination of Coleraine-born novelist Maggie O’Farrell.
The film, which has enrolled the services of Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway, was created by O’Farrell and Chinese director Chloé Zhao.
, its release nicely timed for a tilt at next Sunday’s Golden Globes in Beverly Hills, pays particular emphasis to the witchy and seer-like qualities of Mrs Shakespeare. But the stage version, which premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon and was staged off Broadway in Brooklyn, foregrounds a racial dimension which is unstated on screen.
That earlier script was adapted by O’Farrell and Lolita Chakrabati, the British actor and writer. While it draws heavily on the drama of the heroine’s “second sight” and her abilities to read portents and create cures from the natural world, it also dwells on matters of heritage and identity which are missing from the film. On stage, Agnes and the three children, including Hamnet, are mixed race. This is not just a consequence of colour-blind casting but a deliberate decision.
This could be confusing for those of us who are not actors, dramaturgs, or academics, particularly in an era where the literal truth about artistic endeavours is often open to challenge — witness the ongoing rancour about book and film and the arguments about the historical accuracy of Ridley Scott’s as two recent examples.
But there are a number of differences. In this case, distance lends enchantment.
We know precious little about the story of the woman who married a glove-maker’s son while being eight years his senior.
She was already pregnant at the time of their marriage in an era when midwives were expected to force the name of the father from unmarried expectant mothers.
In her 2007 biography, feminist Germaine Greer wrote: “By doing the right thing, by remaining silent and invisible, Ann Shakespeare left a wife-shaped void in the biography of William Shakespeare.”
Such vacuums become the province of the dramatist and the writer, and their narratives and priorities can change. In an interview on New Year’s Eve, O’Farrell said:
“One reason why Shakespeare has endured is because everybody has their own version of him inside their head.”
That is key. Women’s Prize for Fiction award-winning book, RSC production, major film — all are different. All are works of the imagination, the latest with a highly laudatory Irish emphasis. In an interview with the BBC, O’Farrell joked to Zhao: “Did you actually do any auditions or did you just go on holiday to Ireland?”
Notwithstanding debates about the moveable feast of truth and artistry, this untold story about love and loss contains a universal message that will resonate with many millions.
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