Brittle: How Ireland Built a Housing Crisis and How To Fix It

Ideal for readers who…

• Want to understand why housing in Ireland is so expensive — and why it got this way — Ronan Lyons has spent fifteen years researching the Irish housing market, producing the Daft.ie House Price Report and publishing academic work on Irish housing in international economic journals. This isn't commentary: it's analysis from the person who has studied the data most closely.
• Are renting in Ireland and feel like something has gone fundamentally wrong — they're right, and this book explains exactly what. Lyons traces the policy decisions, planning failures, and structural choices that created the crisis, without the vagueness of political debate or the simplification of newspaper opinion columns.
• Want to know if the housing crisis can actually be fixed — and how — the second half of the book's subtitle is "and How To Fix It." Lyons doesn't stop at diagnosis. He sets out the specific policy changes that could resolve Ireland's housing shortage, grounded in international evidence and comparative analysis.
• Follow Irish politics and economics and want the expert account — housing has dominated Irish political debate for a decade. Lyons has been the most consistently cited economist on housing throughout that period. This is the book that puts the full argument in one place, from the person whose research has shaped the policy conversation.
• Are interested in urban economics, planning, and why cities work the way they do — Brittle is not just about Ireland. The mechanisms Lyons describes — how planning restrictions, tax treatment of land, and construction costs interact to constrain housing supply — apply across Europe and beyond. Irish readers will recognise the specific consequences; international readers will recognise the pattern.
• Are buying a gift for someone who cares about Ireland's future — this is the rare economics book that is also urgently relevant to everyday life. Anyone who rents, owns, or is trying to get onto the property ladder in Ireland will find something in here that explains their experience. It is accessible enough for a general reader and rigorous enough to satisfy someone with an economics background.