Something is badly broken in Waterford’s housing market, and the numbers make for uncomfortable reading.
Average monthly rents in Waterford City now stand at €1,235, a staggering 55% rise since the pre-pandemic period.
County-wide rents have increased by 53% over the same stretch. In the last year alone, city rents surged by 11%, against hourly wage growth of just 3.5%.
The gap between what people earn and what they must pay to keep a roof over their heads is not narrowing. It is widening at an alarming pace.
The picture is no better for those hoping to own a home. In 2019, Waterford house prices sat at 4.7 times the average annual wage.
Today that figure has reached seven times the average wage.
For most working people, homeownership has moved from aspiration to fantasy.
It is not a pipe dream because of anything they have done wrong, it is a pipe dream because the system has been designed, whether by accident or by intention, to make it so.
Social housing provision tells an equally troubling story. Builds are averaging just 87 units per year in Waterford, nowhere near sufficient to meet demand.
Meanwhile, the private rental sector has become effectively off-limits for those relying on Housing Assistance Payments, with no accommodation in Waterford city centre now eligible under the HAP scheme.
The social housing waiting list has grown by 27% since 2018, rising from 1,117 to 1,419 households.
Of those waiting, 42% are living with parents or friends, 34% are in employment, 34% have children, and nearly a quarter have been waiting five years or longer.
These are not statistics, they are families, our members, workers and young people whose lives are on hold.
The response from government has been to double down on a developer-led model that is plainly not working. Budget 2026 introduced over half a billion euros in tax breaks to developers, even as two of the largest house-building firms saw profits soar by 60% last year.
We are, in effect, subsidising windfall gains while workers queue for housing that never comes.
There is a better way, and the evidence for it is hiding in plain sight. Government data shows that the construction cost of a two-bedroom semi-detached home in Dublin is roughly half its market price.
That gap is not the product of market forces working efficiently, it is the product of a system that has allowed land values, speculative pricing and developer margins to drive costs far beyond what building homes actually requires.
If we tie housing costs to construction rather than to market speculation, we change the entire dynamic.
SIPTU, whose Waterford District Council members (pictured above) gathered last Friday in Connolly Hall to examine a detailed new report by SIPTU Researcher, Michael Taft on the local housing crisis are calling for exactly that shift, a decisive move away from developer subsidies and towards a public-led affordability model.
The overriding principle is straightforward: affordable homes should track construction costs, not market prices, whether for purchase or rent.
This is not a radical proposition. It is common sense. It is a return to the understanding that housing is a public good, one that can only be secured through substantial and sustained public intervention.
The alternative, leaving the market to set the terms, has had its chance, and it has failed working people again and again.
High house prices and high rents are not inevitable. They are not some force of nature beyond political control. They are, ultimately, a political choice. And that means they can be un-chosen.
We can choose a better, fairer way. The question is whether those in power have the will to do so. Waterford’s workers, and workers across this country, deserve an honest answer.