The Irish property bubble was the speculative excess element of a long-term price increase of real estate in the Republic of Ireland from the early 2000s to 2007, a period known as the later part of the Celtic Tiger. In 2006, the prices peaked at the top of the bubble, with a combination of increased speculative construction (financed almost entirely by senior debt) and rapidly rising prices; in 2007 the prices first stabilised and then started to fall until 2010 following the shock effect of the Great Recession. By the second quarter of 2010, house prices in Ireland had fallen by 35% compared with the second quarter of 2007, and the number of housing loans approved fell by 73%.
The collapse of the property bubble was one of the major contributing factors to the post-2008 Irish banking crisis.
House prices in Dublin, the largest city, were briefly down 56% from their peak and apartment prices down over 62%. For a time, house prices returned to twentieth century levels and mortgage approvals dropped to 1971 levels. As of December 2012, more than 28% of Irish mortgages were in arrears or had been restructured and commercial and buy-to-let arrears were at 18%. Since early-2013, property prices in the country began to recover with property prices in Dublin up over 20% from their nadir.
The collapse of the Irish property bubble has had a lasting effect on the political, economic, social and financial landscape of Ireland. While early negative effects such as ghost estates and high unemployment have been largely resolved, the residual collapse of the Irish banking and construction sectors has contributed to a countrywide housing crisis that persists as of 2020.
The bubble years
Background
From 1991 to 2001, Ireland's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged above 7% and there was a large expansion in the workforce. From 1990 to 2000, the Irish gross national product (GNP) per capita rose 58%, bringing it above the European Union average. The pace of expansion in lending to households from 2003 to 2007 was among the highest in the Eurozone, with German banks having US$208.3 billion in total exposure to Ireland. These factors led to house prices increasing by 17% between May 2000 to May 2001 alone. In August 2000, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report contended that Irish property prices were almost certainly heading for a collapse in the medium term since "no industrial country in the last 20 years had experienced price increases on the scale of Ireland without suffering a subsequent fall". From 2000, approximately 75,000 housing units were built every year as detailed by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government with sufficient planning permission being granted so that by 2005, there was enough zoned land to accommodate 460,000 new homes as housing density figures continued to rise each year. House prices went on to more than double between 2000 and 2006, with tax incentives being a key driver of this price rise. The Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat government received much criticism for these policies. In 2004, the independently produced Review of the Construction Industry, commissioned by the Department of the Environment and Local Government, estimates that 12% of the workforce were employed directly in the construction industry. One author described the "Breakfast Roll Men"—named after the popular convenience food construction workers often ate—as "the pumping heart of the economy".
Interest rates set by the European Central Bank (ECB) are only guided by low inflation targets in the Eurozone. Some felt this was, and is, too narrow an objective, leading to decisions on interest rates that are inappropriate, e.g. for states with record levels of employment, rising house prices, and consumer spending.
Contributing factors
Poor financial sector supervision
The pace of credit expansion to finance the Irish housing bubble accelerated sharply in the years preceding the crisis. The relaxed and weak Irish regulatory supervision of the financial sector made the financing of excessively increasing real estate prices in the Irish market possible. The Financial Regulator and the Central Bank were responsible for the inadequacy of the financial stability system at the time of crisis. The financial institutions at the heart of the crisis have contributed to a general climate of mistrust in the transparency and accountability of the financial sector in Ireland, as well as in the capacity of corporate oversight and enforcement.