Unpicking Leitrim's housing paradox

Affordable homes, growing demand – so why aren’t more houses being built? In a special Leitrim Observer housing focus, Eoin Gallagher speaks to estate agents, housing experts, councillors and local authority representatives about the opportunities and challenges facing the county’s housing market.

Leitrim is rising in popularity as a place for people to come and live, but where is the housing market at right now?

Along with everywhere else in the country, Leitrim house prices have risen in recent years, though the county maintains one of the lowest median prices in the country at €210,000.

“We just need to look outside our bubble a little bit and see what we’ve got, because we actually do have an opportunity where young families can buy and afford a home here,” said Joe Brady, a real estate agent based in Carrick-on-Shannon.

“I sold a house in Dun Laoghaire last week, a three-bed semi, that’ll be about equal to a three-bed semi in Oakland’s in Carrick-on-Shannon that’ll sell for about €220,000. It sold for €685,000, and it wasn’t a fancy area in Dun Laoghaire.”

“We are, if not the lowest price point in the country, we’re not far off it, but our quality of life is one of the best in the country.”

That is a message Leitrim County Council is also seeking to promote through its Definitely, Leitrim campaign.

“It’s really important that we tell a very positive story about where the county is going,” said David Minton, Director of Services with Leitrim County Council, who said showcasing the interest in moving to the county would help attract developers.

If demand is there, what is holding back development?

Joe Brady believes a lack of demand is not the issue.

Instead, he says developers face planning, finance and infrastructure risks that make projects difficult to deliver.

“The reaction of government and the banks to the crash was to increase planning risk, increase risk of connections with Irish Water, increase risk of banking, increase charges up and down the whole, every heading that you can think of,” he said.

“Now you have a situation where all of the generation that developed in that kind of 99 to 07 period, they all got their clocks cleaned. They got knocked out completely, and they were dragged over the coals for five, 10 years by the banks, and they have absolutely no risk appetite.”

Construction companies are also reporting labour shortages.

According to Property Industry Ireland’s 2026 report, Ireland needs around 100,000 additional construction workers by 2030.

Infrastructure remains a challenge

Access to water services is another issue identified by those involved in housing.

Councillor Paddy O’Rourke said the Carrigallen Waste Water Treatment Plant is operating at capacity.

“At the moment, you wouldn’t get planning permission for new houses in Carrigallen because the treatment plant is at capacity.”

He said this also affects nearby areas. “I know people who are interested in building very substantially in Leitrim Village, and they can’t get off the ground either.”

Speaking more generally about housing delivery, Cllr O’Rourke said that “the biggest impediment to building houses in Leitrim at the minute is Irish Water, who are failing in their duty to supply the necessary services”.

“It’s up to our senior politicians to make sure that places like Leitrim get their share of it and that they’re not just written off as being a place of small population where the greater majority of the people live in one-off houses and make their own arrangements about treatment,” he said.

Irish Water has said that the Carrigallen Wastewater Treatment Plant is being assessed for potential upgrades under the Small Towns and Villages Growth Programme.

It has added that it plans to progress a planning application for a €30 million upgrade at Carrick-on-Shannon Water Treatment Plant, which they estimate would increase the plant's production capacity by approximately 70%. Planning permission is expected to be submitted next year.

Making better use of existing homes

According to Central Statistics Office figures, around 205 dwellings were completed in Leitrim during the last 12 months.

During the same period, Leitrim County Council completed 33 social housing units, while more than 27 social homes were in the pipeline at the beginning of 2026.

The county has also completed a number of former ghost estates.

There were more than 100 housing units in ghost estates available for development into social housing in 2020, with estates in Drumshanbo and Ballinamore completed in recent years.

“We bought some houses very worth the money over the years,” said Cllr O’Rourke.

“I suppose the economic crash for some was a disaster, but for Leitrim County Council it provided an opportunity that they were able to buy houses in estates cheaper than they could build them.”

Leitrim also has the highest rate of derelict properties in the country.

Many can be renovated through the Above the Shop Scheme and the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant.

According to council figures, 413 grant applications have been made in Leitrim, with 293 approved and 125 paid, amounting to approximately €6.69 million.

Lorcan Sirr, Senior Lecturer in Housing Policy at the Technical University of Dublin, said the grants have been positive, though he believes they would be more effective if payments were phased and opened to builders working on multiple properties.

The rental market

Short-term letting is another issue discussed by Professor Sirr.

A search online showed 152 Airbnb properties available in Leitrim compared with nine long-term rental properties.

“The theory behind Airbnb was that you’d rent a room in your house to some backpacker for a couple of nights and all that kind of stuff, but it’s gone out of hand, and now it’s an industry in itself.”

Professor Sirr referred to Barcelona’s decision to ban Airbnb and said rental prices there had fallen as properties returned to the long-term market.

Can the private market solve the housing crisis?

Professor Sirr said the Government would need to build its way out of the housing crisis.

“The state needs to stop propping up the private sector. It needs to concentrate on building social and affordable housing for itself.”

He said people commuting to Dublin are now travelling from further west than previously.

“What you see over the last five or six years is that people who have always lived in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow and commuted to Dublin, but that circle out of places like Dublin is getting bigger and moving into places like Tipperary, Offaly, and even places like Cavan and Leitrim.”

Professor Sirr also argued against reducing regulation.

“Deregulation has never made a house any cheaper anywhere, and all it has done is reduce quality. It increases prices and reduces quality.”

“Regulation is there for a reason, and it’s usually because something bad has happened and we need regulation to protect people. Getting rid of that might sound sensible to a 12-year-old, but anybody with half a brain would realise that ultimately deregulation causes more problems than it solves.”

He also questioned whether increased private housing supply alone would reduce prices.

“Nobody can ever point out a time to me when builders have kept building as prices fall. When prices fall, builders stop building. So this notion that if we build enough houses, prices will fall is a fallacy.”

“Quite sensibly and quite logically, if you were a builder and prices start to fall, you’re going to say, hang on a second, by the time I start this project in two years, and when I finish with 20 houses in Carrick, prices are going to drop by 30 grand.”

“The state has a problem in that every time it spends money, it sees it as expenditure rather than investment.”

“The government needs to focus on their own priorities of social and affordable, like housing that’s affordable to families on, like, under €80,000 a year.

“And let the private sector look after itself. Instead, it keeps propping up the private sector.”

Local representatives’ perspectives

Councillor Róisín Kenny has called for a referendum to add housing as a fundamental right in the Constitution.

Her motion, asking Leitrim County Council to call for such a referendum, was supported by councillors.

“To recognise the rights of all persons to adequate housing and to enshrine those rights in the constitution through a referendum.”

“While the right to a house wouldn’t guarantee everyone in the state a right to a house, it would place an important legal obligation on the government and on all future governments to progressively realise that right through their policies, laws and budgets.”

“For years, you had a situation where there was very little, if any, council houses funded by the government; they were leaving it all to the private sector and the result of which is the crisis we are in now.”

Councillor Pádraig Fallon said Leitrim continues to have much to offer prospective residents.

“The real value in Leitrim is the quality of life.”

He pointed to community spirit, schools, access to third-level education in neighbouring Sligo and comparatively lower house prices.

“We do need more people in Leitrim. We have many communities, I suppose that could do in particular with some families moving to them. Kilticlher is an example. There are other small rural communities too, that would be delighted to see new people move.”

“Leitrim has real opportunities around vacant buildings. Doesn’t have the same opportunity around new builds.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.