73% of people allocated social housing in the capital are Irish citizens, new data from Dublin City Council has revealed. 

Following queries from councillors, DCC has released figures, revealing what percentage of people in social housing are Irish and the level of demand for social housing among the city’s migrant communities. 

On The Claire Byrne Show, migration expert Ciara Murphy has said there are a number of “nuances” to be found within the numbers.  

“The headline figures are that migrants are over-represented on social housing waiting lists, so the headline figure that was reported was 42% of people on the social housing waiting list are non-Irish,” she explained. 

“That's the people who are waiting for social housing; if you look at the allocations data, it's a lower number, it's 27%. 

“Then, if you look at the people who are in social housing stock, we don't know it but we know that nationally it is a lower number of migrants than Irish people, if that makes sense.” 

Homes in Dublin's North Inner City. Picture by: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie.

Ms Murphy continued that it is “not surprising” that many migrants in Irish society are in need of social housing. 

“Migrants are at the sharp end of the housing crisis,” she added. 

“We have made over the last 40 years social housing a very residual category, so it's for the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable. 

“We sold off a lot of our social housing stock we haven't built to replace that so it's a very small proportion of overall tenure. 

“Basically, it means that only the most urgent need ends up generally in social housing or you wait for a very long time.” 

Given migrants tend to be younger than the population as a whole, fewer of them own their own home. 

It all means that they are among the groups most impacted by the housing crisis. 

“Homelessness, overcrowding, substandard housing - so the rental market in particular,” Ms Murphy said. 

“So, 71% of non-Irish people are in rental housing , [compared to] 14% of Irish.

“That's where you get homelessness, it's where you get evictions, it's where you get really big problems with overcrowding and we know that migrants tend to be overrepresented in those figures and all of those things are criteria that we look at for social housing.”

Main image: A man holding a bunch of keys. Picture by: Alamy.com.