Article in the Kerryman

Written by DECLAN MALONE & JOAN MAGUIRE WEST KERRY

13 May 2026

There are ser­i­ous ques­tions around the mor­al­ity of own­ing hol­i­day homes in the West Kerry Gaeltacht at a time when local people can’t buy a house, accord­ing to a Trin­ity Col­lege researcher who hopes local voices can change gov­ern­ment policy for the bet­ter.

Ann Nolan, who has been a long-time vis­itor to West Kerry, got a new per­spect­ive on the area last year when an exten­ded stay opened her eyes to aspects of life she hadn’t pre­vi­ously seen.

“After the tour­ists left in Septem­ber, I was struck by the sense of des­ol­a­tion in the place. So many of the houses, one more beau­ti­ful than the other, were left in dark­ness… There’s no shop left in the vil­lage [of Baile an Fheirtéaraigh]. It felt like a com­munity in decline,” Ann told The Ker­ry­man.

Cent­ral to the switch from sum­mer boom to winter gloom in West Kerry is the demand for hol­i­day homes, which drives up house prices and pushes young local buy­ers out of the mar­ket, with dev­ast­at­ing con­sequences for Gaeltacht com­munit­ies. Mean­while, restrict­ive plan­ning policies make it dif­fi­cult for people to build more afford­ably on their own land because, in scenic West Kerry, almost every poten­tial site stands in the way of ‘pro­tec­ted views and pro­spects’.

The gov­ern­ment’s recently announced National Plan­ning State­ment on Hous­ing in Gaeltacht Areas, due to be pub­lished next year, offers some hope of policy changes that could bene­fit Irish-speak­ing com­munit­ies. However, Ann believes that for gov­ern­ment strategy to work it needs to address the real needs of real people and to have meas­ur­able out­comes and enforce­ment, not just vague aspir­a­tions that come to noth­ing.

As an Assist­ant Pro­fessor of Social Policy in Trin­ity Col­lege’s School of Social Work and Social Policy, Ann felt she could help get the views of local people in West Kerry heard when the state­ment on plan­ning in Gaeltacht areas is being drawn up.

To this end she has been con­duct­ing on-the-ground research to learn what West Kerry people think is needed to make hous­ing more access­ible and afford­able and to pro­tect the Irish lan­guage. She is also com­par­ing the Irish Gaeltacht exper­i­ence to other areas with sim­ilar lan­guage and hous­ing prob­lems, such as Wales and Spain, where gov­ern­ments are respond­ing to the pres­sures that over-expan­ded tour­ism is hav­ing on local com­munit­ies.

The research, by Trin­ity Col­lege’s Schools of Social Work and Social Policy, and Lin­guistic, Speech and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Sci­ences, in part­ner­ship with Tobar Dhuibhne, Plean Teanga Chiarraí Thiar, will be pub­lished in late sum­mer to inform the devel­op­ment of the National Plan­ning State­ment for Hous­ing in Gaeltacht Areas. A more detailed aca­demic paper on the research will also be pub­lished at a later date.

While the res­ults of the research are not yet avail­able, Ann is clear that hol­i­day homes are a key issue in West Kerry’s hous­ing mar­ket.

“What does it mean if a per­son buys a second house without thought for the impact on house prices, mak­ing it impossible for loc­als in an area to buy a house?” she said.

“In Ire­land you have a tiny per­cent­age of people who can afford to buy second homes and use them for a couple of weeks a year,” said Ann, adding: “There’s something inher­ently uneth­ical in the fact that 40 per cent of the hous­ing stock in Corca Dhuibhne is either hol­i­day homes or vacant in an envir­on­ment where local young people can’t afford to buy a house.”

On the flip side, she said loc­als who are put­ting a house on the mar­ket need to bear in mind that “selling for the highest price isn’t always the best option”.

“There’s a big dif­fer­ence between what you need and what you want. Do people need to get the highest price if they are selling a house, when they can see local fam­il­ies unable to find or afford a place to live,” she said… “When money is the only meas­ure by which you make decisions then other things, less tan­gible but import­ant, can be lost.”

 

The Kerryman (North Kerry)

13 May 2026

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