There are now over two thousand entire homes available for short-term rental sa Ghaeltacht, in the very same areas where the Irish language is so threatened and supposed to be protected. And as the likes of Airbnb grow year on year — with an increase of 88% in the number of Gaeltacht homes listed on Airbnb since 2019 — young Irish speakers are struggling with the lack of housing, and the unaffordability of what housing is available.
As Donncha Ó hÉallaithe described to politicians earlier this year: “At one time it was difficult to keep people in the Gaeltacht… It’s great that we’ve come to the point where people, at the age of my kids who are in their twenties, want to live in the Gaeltacht, want to raise children with Irish in the Gaeltacht… But there’s this barrier, the housing barrier.”
According to one newspaper: “More than 12,000 houses are needed in the Gaeltacht to meet the current housing needs of the communities” (Ó Liatháin, 2026), while the Gaelic League itself, Conradh na Gaeilge, has linked the decline of the Irish language directly to the housing crisis: “Without a national policy for housing in the Gaeltacht, without a limit on developments in the Gaeltacht that don’t have language conditions imposed on them, without strong legislative provisions, the erosion of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht will continue” (Conradh na Gaeilge, 2025).
People sa Ghaeltacht are organising: Bánú, which means ‘desertion, depopulation’, formed in Connemara three years ago after a series of public meetings, while Tinteán, meaning ‘hearth’, formed two years ago i gCúige Uladh. Supported by Conradh na Gaeilge and CATU, these groups demand a new Housing Department, implementation of a ‘Ready to Build’ scheme, changes to planning restrictions, funding support for renovation and building, and a new condition that would see each Language Planning Area sa Ghaeltacht designing its own Housing Strategy, as measures to support Irish-speakers to remain in, and to return to, the Gaeltacht.
One member of Bánú summarised the issues they currently face as follows: “You essentially just can’t rent in the Gaeltacht. This comes back to the number of holiday homes and second homes in these areas. And when properties come on the market, they’re extortionate… Local people are in competition with someone who’s trying to buy maybe their second or third home. They’re priced out” (Ó Liatháin, 2026). And just as Celtic regions and languages share a history of marginalisation, today they share a story of displacement and unaffordability.
Groups such as Dispac’h, meaning ‘Revolution’, are organising in Brittany, where in some coastal areas 80% of properties are holiday homes, and the Breton language, long in decline, is further threatened by the exodus of young people who cannot afford to buy or rent in the region (Lucas, 2021).
Last year in Scotland, the Green Party attempted to introduce a tax on holiday homes and short-term rentals in what remains of the country’s Gàidhlig-speaking areas, describing how: “Young Gaelic speakers are being forced out of the last communities where it is still the spoken language because holiday homes and Airbnb-style short-term lets have driven up house prices” (Scottish Housing News, 2025).
In Wales, where a group called Meibion Glyndŵr formed and set fire to around two hundred vacant holiday homes in the nineties, local government is loud about identifying and resolving the problem, a problem illustrated nowhere more clearly than in Gwynedd, a region in which 59.6% of local people are currently priced out of the housing market, and a region with a 64.4% Welsh-speaking population (Welsh Language Commissioner, 2022).
Even as we speak so often now of the language revival in Ireland, our language remains in a precarious position, one which we cannot separate from the materiality of daily life, and the precarity of housing for so many people in Ireland today. As we organise in Bánú, in Tinteán, in Conradh na Gaeilge and in CATU, we must be clear-headed about the Ireland we want to live in, and about what housing, community and language we want going forward.
As the president of Conradh na Gaeilge, Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin, recently put it: “Recognition alone will not solve the housing crisis. If families cannot build or buy homes in their own areas, the Gaeltacht cannot survive. And without the Gaeltacht, there is no future for the Irish language as a community language.”
To put it another way, we cannot, as Irish-speakers, worry about what language each of us uses in “the kitchen and in the bedroom” of McCloskey’s writings without considering with equal concern whether each of us has our most basic housing needs met: “Housing and language are intrinsically linked” (Ní Chinnéide, 2025).
