Five Questions on Housing, Defective Concrete, and Populism in Ireland

What is Ireland’s defective concrete crisis and why did you choose to study it?

When I began my Ph.D. research back in 2019, I noticed a disconnect between how some observers pegged the Republic of Ireland as an exception to Europe’s far-right wave. At the time, no far-right party had won seats in the Oireachtas, Ireland’s parliament, but sentiments often associated with the far-right in Europe—including xenophobia and anti-European Union (EU) skepticism—were very present.

Far-right sentiment is being fueled by a combination of factors in Ireland. But the main concern that continuously came up in conversations, social media trends, and news articles was housing.

For over a decade, cracks have been appearing in thousands of homes across Ireland’s northwestern county of Donegal. Many houses, businesses, schools, hospitals, and even government buildings are riddled with defective concrete, leaving people living with mold, electrical hazards, and structural instability. Now, the infrastructure of at least 16 Irish counties has been found to be impacted by defective building materials.

This disaster is happening within a larger housing crisis. Rents are soaring in Ireland’s cities and countryside, and home ownership is out of reach for most people.

People in Donegal find themselves in an impossible situation. Fungal spores are causing many homeowners chest infections, headaches, asthma attacks, and other lung problems. Children are not only living in unsafe homes, but their daycares and schools are showing cracks too.

Meanwhile, homeowners continue to pay mortgages on houses that are worthless. Even if families could afford their rising mortgage rates plus rental accommodation, the housing crisis has made it impossible to find rentals. Public housing is also affected by the bad concrete. And Donegal is home to many farmers, for whom relocating would mean leaving livelihoods behind.

Affected homeowners have marched in the capital, Dublin, called for 100 percent compensation for rebuilding costs, and threatened civil disobedience, all with little success. Few homes have been rebuilt. Addressing the crisis could cost €3.2 billion ($3.5 billion).

In many ways, this story is unique to Ireland. During the Celtic Tiger economic boom of 1995-2007, the construction industry self-regulated without a comprehensive independent audit or inspection system. New property developments, mostly made of concrete, nearly tripled.

But in other ways, Donegal’s story fits larger patterns. As a teacher and researcher on environmental problems and disasters, I see comparisons with other environmental injustices around the world, from the Bhopal chemical disaster in India to the Flint water crisis in my home state of Michigan, which share stories of deferred maintenance, political negligence, and a lack of accountability.

What is unique about Donegal, and what makes the county particularly vulnerable to a crisis like this?

There’s a mystique to Donegal. Its rugged cliffs, mountains, and white sandy beaches are reflected in the famous Donegal fiddle tradition, played at a fast pace with strong bowing. Landscapes are literally woven into fabric with the rich Donegal tweed tradition. You can hear the mystique when Enya sings about the beautiful waters of her home county. To be from Donegal is to have something in your bones, something tethered to the land and the generations before.

Part of the story of Donegal is its isolation. It’s the island’s northernmost county, more north than Northern Ireland itself. The partition of the island between an independent Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland in 1921 saw Donegal become a practical exclave of the Irish state. It’s been called “the forgotten county.” To this day, there are no train lines that connect Donegal with the rest of the island, and it still hasn’t been connected to the national gas network. Donegal is far closer to Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast, than it is to Dublin.

The physical and political distance could be a major factor in why the crisis hasn’t been given serious attention from lawmakers in Dublin. Of the 160 members of Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s primary legislative body, only five hail from Donegal. For many homeowners fighting for redress, getting national attention has been one of their main obstacles.

How has the Irish government responded to the crisis, and what’s been the reaction in Donegal?

The response has been negligent at best. The lack of urgency at all levels of government has caused physical and mental harm to homeowners.

Government action has been delayed and based on “laughable science” which identified the wrong mineral as the main culprit and caused many homeowners to question information from Dublin. Independent scientists from across the globe recommend completely removing the homes’ foundations when rebuilding, but the current government grant scheme does not include those costs because of the faulty science they continue to use.

Few homeowners have made it through the drawn-out application process to rebuild. Those who have report going further into debt—sometimes by €80,000 ($88,000)—because of the gap between the grant money and the actual costs to rebuild.

Donegal homeowners are mad. And for the first time in generations, they are shifting their political allegiances. Ireland’s two major political parties—Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael—have been in power since the 1930s. Broadly similar in terms of policy, voting for one of these parties is often a family affair, dating back to whom voters’ ancestors supported during the Irish Civil War in the 1920s.

But in Donegal’s June 2024 local elections, support for Fine Gael fell almost 8 percent, and 100% Redress—a new political party born from the defective concrete crisis—elected four councilors, making it the third-largest party on the county council.

In spring 2023, I was in some of the first public meetings where activists pitched forming this party. Although they didn’t have much political experience, they set out to become “accidental politicians,” just like they had already become “accidental geologists”—reading peer-reviewed scientific journals to understand the science behind their crumbling homes, science that politicians refuse to acknowledge.

In Donegal, the success of 100% Redress wasn’t much of a shock, but it surprised many in Dublin. The party is now eyeing the next national election. Its success in Donegal could be used as a blueprint for other counties affected by defective building materials.

How powerful is populism in Ireland, and what does it look like as a political force?

There are many debates over how to define populism. As an anthropologist and ethnographer, I follow a recent call by Jeff Maskovsky and Sophie Bjork-James in Beyond Populism to see these political movements as expressions of specific local contexts with unique historical, class, gender, and race dimensions. Ireland’s history with populism is no different.

Sinn Féin, the cross-border left-wing political party historically linked to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is the force most associated with Irish populism. For years, the party began to disassociate itself from the political violence enacted during the Troubles in Northern Ireland from 1968-98, but continued to characterize itself as a nationalist, anti-elite party skeptical of the EU.

In the last general election of February 2020, Sinn Féin achieved a historic victory and became Ireland’s main opposition party. Sinn Féin’s success followed the pattern of other recent populist victories throughout Europe, capitalizing on voters’ dissatisfaction with mainstream politics. But Irish voters were more concerned with housing and healthcare than with nationalistic sentiments like in other European countries. And since then, many of the people I worked with in Donegal have even started to see Sinn Féin as becoming too mainstream.

But solely focusing on election results obscures the rise of the far right in Ireland. Although far-right parties did not win any seats in the 2020 national elections, it was one of the first campaigns where far-right rhetoric on immigration, joblessness, and the EU crept into mainstream conversations.

Housing has become one of the far right’s main issues. The defective concrete disaster has become an online rallying point for far-right mobilization in Ireland.

Several emerging far-right parties have adopted slogans like “House the Irish First,” trying to link the housing shortage to the accommodation of refugees in Ireland. Since fall 2022, there’s been a rise of anti-immigration protests across Ireland. These protests are increasing, and happen in both urban areas like East Wall in inner-city Dublin and rural areas like Inch in County Clare.

It’s not the fear of refugees competing for jobs that motivate these protests—it’s fear that there aren’t enough houses to accommodate everyone. And in Donegal, there is a real shortage of safe, livable housing.

Many campaigners for 100 percent redress are aware of how the far right could exploit their struggles—they tell their friends, neighbors, and peers that their anger should be directed at local and national governments that have refused to build more temporary accommodation, refused to address the real science behind the disaster, and refused to offer full compensation.

Democracies across the world are facing challenges from the rise of populism. What lessons can those outside of Ireland learn from the country’s defective concrete crisis and the political establishment’s response to it?

Do right by the science!

Irish defective concrete homeowners are mad at the politicians who took years to listen to their concerns. They are frustrated over the layers of bureaucracy it takes to navigate the rebuilding process. And they are frightened not only that the roof may collapse on their children on a bad night of Donegal storms, but about how the government handled the science behind this disaster.

Getting the science wrong has impacted everything else. The failed redress scheme and rebuilding options for homeowners are based on bad science. By not following an evidence-based approach to policy, the government is causing homeowners to lose all trust in government. Many homeowners asked me, “what else are they hiding? What else are they not telling us?”

Donegal is a unique case. The 100% Redress Party is clearly anti-mainstream, but instead of following other populist movements’ antagonism towards science, citizens are asking for evidence-based governance. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how the far right have used disinformation to discredit medical experts, but we have also seen grassroots movements work to counter this, such as Science for Democracy.

Various levels of government in Donegal have not done right by the science. From what I have learned over the course of my fieldwork in Ireland, science is essential to liberal democracy.

Kaitlyn Rabach is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at UC Irvine and former IGCC dissertation fellow. Paddy Ryan is senior writer/editor at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).

Photo credit: Brendan Diver copyright from Photos From Ireland