I can't speak for Ireland, though housing costs have become completely out of control. Even the most predatory realtor that I know strongly advocates for affordable housing. Particularly when supposed "affordable housing units" mysteriously become "luxury condos" overnight. It's almost like "economic forces" don't even act like economic forces anymore. They don't even care about making a lot of money on the housing, they just want to ruin the cost of living, get reactionary responses from the government or whatever offices that oversee all of this. Then they will continue to appoint winners, and then build on their failures by advocating for more restrictions and have an interest on sitting on a situation that is tenuous at best.