This paper examines housing affordability in Ireland by looking at the
distribution of housing costs across households. Using microdata from the SILC
survey over the period 2005-2015, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the
paper considers the trends in the cost of housing in Ireland across groups of
households split by age, region, household structure, and their position in the
income distribution. Second, we apply selected international housing affordability
definitions and explore the share, and composition, of households in Ireland that
would be captured by these definitions. We do not find evidence of universal
affordability difficulties in the Irish market. However, certain groups do face acute
affordability challenges. Third, working towards a definition of housing cost
affordability for use in Irish policy discussions, we provide some guidance as to
what such a definition could look like
