A Dublin man, who moved his wife and three children to the Donegal Gaeltacht to make a new life for themselves, fears they could be made homeless within weeks due to the continuing housing crisis.
Neil Ferry moved to the northwest in 2015 in search of a better quality of life with his wife, Jackie (51); their twin daughters, Aoife and Shauna (16); and their eldest daughter Ceira (20).
Ferry is originally from Ballyfermot but has strong links to the Donegal Gaeltacht. He had hoped to settle in a part of the country which he describes as a “home away from home”.
“The reason why we came up to Donegal is because my father is originally from Gaoth Dobhair,” he says.
While not an Irish speaker himself, Ferry wanted his children to learn the language, and now they are fluent.
“I wasn’t working, my wife wasn’t working, and we said wouldn’t it be lovely to let [the children] see what life is like up here in Gaoth Dobhair,” he says.
As with so many others, their Dublin home, which they bought close to the peak of the property boom was in negative equity, making it difficult to sell without incurring a loss.
“We ended up selling the house in 2017 and we just broke even with it,” says Ferry.
In the nine years they have been in Donegal the family has lived in six houses and only moved into their current accommodation, a three-bedroom bungalow, in January. However, they recently received notice from their landlord that they must vacate the property.
“We were told two weeks ago that we have to the end of September and then we have to be out of the house,” he says. “We have nowhere else to go. There are no other houses around. What are we supposed to do? We’re too old to get a mortgage.”
“We don’t know what we’re going to do with no savings. We have nothing. We’ll have to put our names down on the homeless list but besides that we don’t know what to do.”
Ferry is seeking employment outside of the construction industry, where he worked for 30 years until he was hospitalised with a back injury last year.
Local Independent councillor Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig, who has advocated for the Ferry family, and is involved with the housing activist group Tóg Tithe, says the housing situation in Donegal is “dire”.
“There is a huge holiday home problem. What we’re finding is that middle-class people, upper-class people and investors are buying up everything they can,” he says.
Increases in house prices and rental rates have not been reflected in the wages people are paid and the dream of staying in their locality is increasingly out of reach for the local community.
“Socially and economically, we’re one of the most deprived places in the Free State. If you look at our wage base, it’s probably one of the lowest in the 26 counties,” he says.
Rental rates have increased sharply in recent years, putting the rental market beyond the reach of many people.
“The rent has gone up from the €400 a month we paid when we moved here,” says Ferry. “We’re looking now at about €1,200 a month.”
We need communities in these Gaeltacht areas for the language to be able to survive
— Róisín Ní Chéilleachair, spokeswoman for Conradh na Gaeilge
Many are priced out of the market by landlords who have put their properties up for short-term rent on platforms such as Airbnb.
One landlord told Ferry that he could earn as much from short-term rentals in a single summer as he would in an entire year were he to rent it to a family.
“He said there would be less damage and less maintenance needed in the house. ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ [the landlord] said. ‘I can have people in the house over a three-month period rather than having a full family and for a whole year.’”
Increased property prices, short-term rentals and rigid planning regulations are particularly detrimental to the social cohesion of Gaeltacht regions where the viability of the Irish language as a community language is already endangered.
“If I was to describe housing situation in the Gaeltacht in one word, I would say it is disastrous,” says Róisín Ní Chéilleachair, spokeswoman for Conradh na Gaeilge.
“We need communities in these Gaeltacht areas for the language to be able to survive. Without homes, people can’t live, and without people, the language can’t live.”
She says there is “a dangerous lack of long-term rental property” and a lack of social and affordable housing with “ridiculously arduous and sometimes arbitrary planning processes and applications”.
“We see native speakers or local people who are applying for planning applications on their own land being denied planning permission,” she says. “It results in younger people in particular, but also people of all generations, not being able to find housing in the Gaeltacht and being forced to leave.”
Excluding homes under renovation, derelict, or on the market, Donegal was reported in the 2022 Census to have 2,200 vacant dwellings, surpassing all other counties outside of Dublin.
“There are lots of empty houses,” says Ferry.
He can spot them at night: houses with lights on and houses in darkness. The number of empty houses is shocking, he says. “Then they’re just on Airbnb in the summer.”
He checks property websites every day and has knocked on doors to inquire about vacant properties.
“If there’s no answer in the house, we’re knocking on the next door neighbour’s house to try to see if we can find out who owns it. And we’re still not getting anywhere.”
Despite contacting various agencies, Ferry feels he has exhausted all his options.
“We’re actually worse off now than we were in 2015. We had a roof over our head then. I know it was in negative equity, but we were stable, we were in the house, nobody was going to take it away from us,” he says.
Mac Giolla Easbuig says it is time to critically examine the impact of tourism.
“What value is it to us if we can no longer live in the community we’re from?” he says.
He doesn’t believe it is sustainable and that tourism only benefits “a small proportion of this community”.
“I’m not trying to be hard on those that benefit from it, but most of the people employed in tourism are on minimum wage and it’s seasonal,” he says.
“I cannot rear my family on minimum wage and expect to put them through college and expect them to be able to get a mortgage or pay rent.”
He believes there needs to be a new model that “suits both locals and the tourist market”.
“We’re actually on our knees as we are.”
Conradh na Gaeilge has been calling for Gaeltacht development agency Údarás na Gaeltachta to be given a greater role in housing in Gaeltacht areas.
Recently published legislation includes an amendment on housing and while it falls short of what campaigners were looking for, they see it as an opportunity that could lead to greater change.
“It doesn’t really do anything to actually change the situation as it is,” says Ní Chéilleachair. “It [does] give us more scope to push for the amendments that we’re looking for.”
As the summer comes to a close, and the tourists leave, many houses in west Donegal will be empty again.
“From the end of September until May, most of the houses in our communities will lie dark, when we have people sleeping in cars and people are homeless and forced to the four corners to seek an affordable life,” says Mac Giolla Easbuig.
The situation has made Ferry anxious about the future. “You’re going to bed at night and you’re asking yourself, ‘Have I only got another couple of weeks left here?’” he says.
“It’s sad. I feel that I’m letting my kids down. I feel embarrassed that I’m letting [them] down, that I should be providing for them and I should have a house.
“We thought we would have been safe. All we want is just a bit of safety [of tenure]. That’s all we want.”
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