Amount of young Irish adults still living with parents sees highest rise in Europe

Over a quarter of young Irish adults still live at home with their parents with that figure seeing the fastest rise in Europe over a four year period as the housing crisis bites. 

A new report outlines that more than one-in-four young adults aged 25-34 in Ireland remained living with parents in 2019.

This is far below the levels observed in the southern European countries with a long history of family support and less established rental sectors - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain which range from 45 to 58 per cent.

However, Ireland did see the largest percentage rise in this share between 2015 and 2019 across the 15 countries analysed.

And that was before the housing crisis really kicked in, so that figure can reasonably be expected to have risen even more significantly in more recent years. 

The report, Housing Affordability: Ireland in a Cross-Country Context by Wendy Disch and Rachel Slaymaker, looks at the housing situation in Ireland in recent years. 

They found that Ireland has the fourth highest rate of homeownership for households aged 40+ (just under 80 per cent).

However, Ireland has only the tenth highest rate of homeownership for households aged below 40 (34 per cent), resulting in one of the biggest gaps in ownership rates between younger and older generations (second only to Greece).

Aside from Greece, the countries with lower ownership rates for those below 40 are those with a more established tradition of renting such as Denmark, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Ireland has the lowest share of single adult households amongst independently formed households under 40.