In the Gaeltacht today, an old republican truth is noticeable in a harsh reality. Wolfe Tone’s insistence that the movement rested on “the men of no property” and Liam Mellows’ later re-assertion that “we are back to Tone… relying on that great body, the men of no property” were never abstract. They were a recognition that land and housing decide whether a people can live free or be driven from their own places.
Years later, the same class of people – young speakers of Gaeilge, working families, those without capital – are being pushed out of the last remaining Irish-speaking communities by speculative property and a planning system that prioritises visual amenity over the struggle for a livelihood. The housing crisis in the Gaeltacht is not simply a direct side-effect of the broader housing shortage. It is a structural assault on the material base of the language itself. Of course, the policies that produce this outcome are by no means a conspiracy against the language. Rather, these policies treat the Gaeltacht as a landscape commodity first and a living community second.
The arithmetic of displacement
Census 2022 recorded just over 106,000 people living in Gaeltacht areas, a 7% rise since 2016. Yet the proportion able to speak Irish fell and daily speakers outside education declined. Only 31% of the Gaeltacht population reported speaking Gaeilge daily, and only15% of families are raising their children through the language. Population growth without housing for native speakers means linguistic dilution. The “men of no property” are still here; the property has simply been moved beyond their reach.
Research commissioned by Údarás na Gaeltachta from the 2022 Census makes clear the arithmetic. Housing stock is not meeting the needs of growing families and population. The proportion of housing stock in usage as holiday accommodation is five times above the average. More than 40% of homes in the Language Planning Areas of South Kerry, Tory Island and North Donegal are holiday homes. The vacancy rate is 11%, compared with the national figure of 8%. The most common household type is one with at least one adult child still living at home, young adults locked out of independent living in their own communities.
Short-term letting has accelerated dispossession. In 2024, it was reported that Gaeltacht districts have over 100 times more Airbnb lets advertised than regular rental properties. Data from Inside Airbnb provided to Conradh na Gaeilge and CATU shows that there was an 88% increase in the number of entire homes listed on Airbnb in Gaeltacht Language Planning Areas between May 2019 and September 2025. The rise nationally was 48%. 25 of the 26 Language Planning Areas showed increases. Combined, the five largest hosts own 217 whole homes. There are more entire homes on Airbnb in five Language Planning Areas than the long-term private rentals recorded in the 2022 Census. A TG4 study published in 2024 found 1,017 Gaeltacht properties listed on Airbnb against only ten long-term rentals on Daft.ie. Kerry alone had 543 Airbnbs and zero long-term lets.
Deep roots, disappearing ground
Construction has collapsed relative to need. In the last five years, Gaeltacht communities built at a rate of 1.1 new houses per 1,000 people, against a national rate of 3.9. Only 234 houses were completed in Gaeltacht areas during 2025, when the State built 36,000. Analysis by One Million Homes estimates 12,635 additional houses are required simply to reach the basic EU housing density of 50 homes per 100 people; the Gaeltacht currently sits at 37.9. Over the next decade the same analysis projects a need for 32,000 homes: 7,375 in Galway, 2,362 in Donegal, 920 in Mayo, 704 in Kerry, 561 in Cork, 397 in Meath and 316 in the Déise. In Gaeltacht na nDéise, only 59 homes have been built since 2010, against 222 in the previous decade, even as the number of speakers of Gaeilge rose.
A 2026 survey of 351 people by Údarás na Gaeltachta confirmed the human cost. 56% of respondents were younger than 44. 26% still lived with family. 29% rented. Of those actively looking for housing, 30% were unable to find a rental property, 32% were unable to find a property to purchase, 44% wanted to build and 32% wanted to buy. There is an overwhelming demand for individual houses in the countryside or near villages, precisely the type of housing that the market and the planning system are unwilling to provide for local people.
This is not abstract market failure. This is what happens when land is treated as a speculative asset, rather than the basis of community. While the stunning natural beauty of Gaeltacht areas must be protected, planning rules that treat Gaeltacht areas solely as a landscape to be preserved for visitors, inadequate wastewater infrastructure that prevents multi-unit schemes and the lack of language-conditioned housing obligations have all led to pricing native speakers out. There are 847 vacant houses and 1,324 holiday homes in the Mayo Gaeltacht areas alone. The figures mount up into thousands more, all over the State. Local people applying for permission on family land are routinely refused on the grounds that they have “no housing need” because they currently live elsewhere, often precisely because they cannot live at home.
Mellows understood that administrative independence would be superficial if the “stake in the country” people were allowed to decide its future. Today the future of the Gaeltacht is decided by those with the stake – investors, second-home owners, large Airbnb operators – while the men and women of no property are told that the market must take its course. Without communities, the language cannot survive as a communal language. Homes are essential to any community. Every empty holiday house, every whole house Airbnb, every rejected planning application for a young Irish-speaking couple is a silent eviction of the class Tone and Mellows identified as the only dependable base of the national struggle.
Reclaiming the material base
The answer is not another strategy document. It is the re-assertion of housing as a public and linguistic right: statutory powers and capital for not-for-profit Gaeltacht bodies and local development co-operatives to acquire and service land, language-conditioned social and affordable housing in every Gaeltacht Language Planning Area, a cap on short-term lets, reactivation of targeted grants, and planning decisions that consider the survival of Gaeilge-speaking communities as a material planning consideration rather than an optional amenity. A serious response would restrict entire-home Airbnb lets in Gaeltacht Language Planning Areas altogether.
The vision of Pearse – who proclaimed that “the nation's sovereignty extends not only to all the material possessions of the nation, the nation's soil and all its resources, all wealth and all wealth-producing processes within the nation” – will be unfinished business until the propertyless people can once more live on the land of the Gaeltacht.
Tadgh Ó Cuill-Maonlaí is a trainee barrister at the King's Inns. He is a volunteer board member of Coláiste na Mumhan, the oldest Gaeltacht training college. He has had poetry and local history features published 'as Gaeilge.' He is a volunteer board member of Carbery Housing Association, a housing charity operating in Cork city and county, and is an elected member of the council of the Irish Council for Social Housing.