Ireland's Immigration Numbers Don't Add Up And Housing Is Paying the Price

0:00David McWilliams: Coming up on the show today, it is Kilcanomics Day. If you want to go to Kilcanomics, kilcanomics.com is where you will find us. And the podcast is all about the intersection of immigration and the housing market. What is the right number of immigrants? Can we fix the housing problem with this level of immigration? And ultimately, who pays, who benefits? It's all coming up on the show in a couple of minutes. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W.

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1:58To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by ACAST.

2:10David McWilliams: How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast. And today is a very special podcast because today is the day. If you go to kilcanomics.com, you will see the full line up. Yeah. John, I have to think it's the best line up we have ever had. It's certainly the most eclectic. Yeah, it's looking good, Mike. Do you remember Corey Doctorow who was on the show a couple of months ago? In shitification. Mr. In shitification. He's come over to see him live. We have Mariana Mazzucato, who is one of the most influential economists in the world. I've been trying to get Marianna to come over for about four or five years.

2:50She's always too busy. She is coming over and she is launching her book, Common Good Economics, on the Friday night of Kilconomics. We have some old stalwarts who you probably know. We've Brendan Greeley coming over from the States. He's brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have Mark Blythe. We have a whole host of amazing economists. We have great comedians. and we are introducing a little musical adjunct. Yeah, give us a rundown of that. Lisa Hannigan is playing, a young band called Cardinals are playing, Lucy McWilliams is playing and a whole host of others. So the whole idea is to try and blend.

3:30Nerds like music and music likes nerds, right? That basically people are into economics. We are never regarded as music fans.

3:38David McWilliams: We are never regarded as any interest in music, but yet we do. When we come out of our rabbit hole, We like music, we like politics, we like history, we like comedy, we like science, and of course we like culture. So Kilkenny, this year, we announced today, so you can see who's on, you can see all the shows. We have 60 shows over three days, many venues, one city, the marble city itself, Kilkenny. And if you are a member of the gang, you will get first dibs on the tickets tomorrow. If you are not, they will be on general sale to you on Friday. Many of these tickets go very, very quickly. So if you want to ensure that you get to see some of the world's finest economists, the best comedians, the best crack, join us on Patreon or on davidmcwilliams.ie forward slash crew.

4:36So that's what I've been doing, John, all weekend, is putting the final touches to it. It looks like an amazing lineup. And by the way, just on the music thing, maybe, I wonder would it be possible to put together an economics or an economist band? I mean, you've got the likes of Mark Bootsy Blythe, who plays Amin Bass. Yes. You have, well, you play a good tambourine.

4:59David McWilliams: I play a very good tambourine, as we saw from the last podcast. Well, you know Samaya Keynes, who did the last podcast with us? She could be up. Paddy Cullivan, the great Paddy Cullivan. Exactly. He's actually doing his own gig on the Year of the French down at Kilkenauks. Mark Bly could play. There's lots of people. Liam Halligan, the English economist. Irish parents used to sing rebel songs in Cricklewood for most of his youth. He can belt that a bar or two. Yeah, we could definitely do that. That would not be a bad idea. I'll do precaution. Yes. Anyway, that's what I have been doing for the last while.

5:35we have economists from Asia, from China, from Africa, from the United States, from almost every country in Europe, from Slavic countries, from Latin countries. We're actually doing a session on the Spanish economy and Spanish culture, the Latino sphere. You know, which is really grown. You know, it's like the Latinos in America, people from Latin America, the Spaniards themselves. You know, the fastest growing economy in Europe at the moment are the two polar ends of Europe, Poland on the eastern side and Spain on the southern side. So we're doing all sorts of stuff. And of course, we will be doing lots of stuff about America, because it'll be coming two days after, John, the American midterm elections.

6:22Yeah, that's going to be interesting. Interesting because it is the first ever AI election where people, citizens, will be asking chatbots how to vote.

6:35David McWilliams: Chatbots will be flooding the zone with you-know-what in order to confuse the issues. And in fact, one of the issues we're talking about is can our politics as we know it survive AI? or will AI corrupt it so much by fake news and by all sorts of chicanery that in fact truth will disappear and politics will go down the plug-on. And then what happens? What happens if politics as we know disappears? Well, interesting you say that. One of the people coming is the great German economist Isabella Weber, who has just written a book called Anti-Fascist Economics. And what she's saying is that if we keep going down this road of AI and a concentration of wealth in very few hands, the middle class get eroded, the working class or the poorer class get left behind.

7:28David McWilliams: She said, this is a recipe for fascism. This is a recipe for people to say, okay, fuck this. We're not putting up with it anymore. And she's saying, we need to construct an economics that listens to the people, that protects their interests. that says to the billionaire class, look, guys, all very well, you guys making money, but you simply cannot amass this much money in a democracy. And it'll be really quite interesting. But on the other hand, then, we have a lot of people coming down from the tech side saying that, hold on a second, the world will be made better by all this. So it'll be a lot, a lot, John, of discussions, shouting, roaring, music, comedy, laughs, crack, the whole nine yards.

8:10David McWilliams: And you and I are kicking off with a podcast on the Friday morning live podcast. Yeah, looking forward to that. If you want to have a look at that, dear listeners, kilcanomics.com is where you find us. Again, tickets on sale from Friday in general release and tickets on first dibs basis tomorrow morning to those of you who are on our mailing list, those of you who are in our gang, and those of you who follow us on Patreon. So again, thank you all very much for your support. If I don't see you beforehand, I will see you in Kilkenny on the weekend of the 8th of November. Just so I didn't give you the date, it's the 6th to the 8th of November.

8:51David McWilliams: So there we have it, Johnny. What's on your mind today, Sunshine? Well, it's interesting. I mean, you just spoke there about the number of contributors and economists that are coming from all around the world. Yes. And that's a nice little segue into the CSO's recent report about immigration and the economy. Okay, well, let's start there. So what today's podcast is all going to be about is that fusion of immigration and the housing market. So Economics 101 will tell you that when prices start to rise, it is either there's too much demand or there's too little supply. And when prices start to rise rapidly, there's either far too much demand and far too little supply.

9:40And there's two ways you can actually create equilibrium, i.e. bring prices down. So allow Irish people and immigrants to buy homes and or to rent homes or at least to get a home.

9:51David McWilliams: And that is you either increase the supply, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago, or you decrease the demand. Now, decreasing the demand is an obvious, obvious part of the equation. So I will talk to you about the housing market in the context of maybe having too many new people in the country, and those new people all need to be housed. So like economists are great to say, oh, we need labour in the country, we need new employment. But labour are people, and those people have families. And when those people are families, those people need to be housed, they need to be fed, they need to be watered, they need an education system, they need a health system, they need a transport system, all those things.

10:35And if you increase the population very, very quickly, what you will get, you will get gridlock. And the way in which you reduce gridlock, whether that's in traffic or a housing market that doesn't work, is you cannot do it without looking at the demand side. So that's why we're going to talk about the demand in the economy relative to our ability to produce houses and relative to our ability to house people. So just the headline figures, John, you said CSO have outlined the Irish population is now 5.5 million people. That is 66 ,900 greater than it was this time last year. That's an increase of 1.2%.

11:19Immigration is running at 110 ,600 people. It is down 12 % on the year before, but it's the fifth year in a row where more than 100 ,000 migrants have come to Ireland. Now, that means 500 ,000 new migrants came to Ireland since 2020, since just before the pandemic. that is adding enormous upward pressure on the housing market, which is already dysfunctional, as we know. Yeah. Is there any specific reason for the reduction in immigration by 12 %? I think it's because immigrants themselves are probably talking to their friends and saying, look, that is not the land of milk and honey, you know. We thought basically if we could get a good wage, it equated to saving lots of money, sending that money home, going home, buying a gaff.

12:09In fact, they're probably saying to their mates, that's not what's going on. I also think the government has tightened up a lot on the IPAS stuff, on the asylum stuff, and that all percolates down into immigration figures. But when we dig a bit deeper into the immigration figures, a picture emerges, which is, I don't think, particularly healthy. But immigration is down, you're right, 12 % from this time last year. Emigration, which is mainly Irish people leaving, is running at 62 ,500. It's also down by 5%. So it's still very high, but it means that the net population is about 48 ,100 population increase.

12:52Now that, again, is a significant dilemma because what it means, John, is the natural increase, right, which is the births in the country minus the deaths. that's basically people who are living here, that is running at 18 ,800. But what this all means, if net migration is at 48 ,000, it means that of the population growth in the country, 72 % of population growth was migrants, and only 28 % was, let's say, Irish people, or people who were born here. Now, that is a very, very unusual dynamic for any country because it means a huge part of the growth of the population, like 72%, comes from immigrants, whereas normally what you would think is immigrants are a small minority of the growth in the population.

13:54And, of course, in the case of Ireland, they're not. And that is an issue because we don't have enough houses for people. We don't have enough school places for people. Yeah. And whereabouts are these people coming from? Like, what's the pattern of immigration?

14:12David McWilliams: So this, again, is really, really fascinating. You basically have the Irish authorities split the population of immigrants, people coming home, Irish people returning, British people, European, what they call the core EU, 14 members that existed before 2004. that's basically Greece, Portugal and Spain and the rest of the core old Europe. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got the EU 27, that's Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, etc, etc. And then you have a figure called the rest of the world. And the rest of the world are the people who are coming in on visas. This is actually the people who the state can actually control coming in and out, right?

14:59David McWilliams: Right. Because you can't control your Irish people coming back or going out because we're citizens. England, we have the common travel area with. And the EU, we're all members of the same free trade and free mobility area. Yeah. So 30 ,000 Irish people came home last year and 35 ,000 Irish people emigrated. So that's about a 5 ,000 difference in the Irish population, right? Right. But it's minus. Can I just interrogate that number just a little bit? What is the age profile of these immigrants? Like, are they all working age or what's the story? They're all young. Oh, they're all young. Okay. The ones that go out are all mainly young.

15:37David McWilliams: The ones that come home are in their 30s and their 40s. So then from the UK people, so it's basically UK residents living in Ireland, right? 4 ,300 UK residents came to Ireland and 2 ,000 UK residents who were resident in Ireland left the country. So it's a figure of like 2 ,300. It really doesn't matter. It's a small amount. When it comes to the Europeans, you know, there's about a 5 ,000-plus net immigration of Europeans from the old EU, and there's about a 6 ,000-plus net immigration of Europeans from the Polans, Bulgarias, Romanias. But the massive figure, John, is 55 ,000 immigrants from the rest of the world came in.

16:22Only 16 ,000 of those from the rest of the world left, meaning that 40 ,000 more or less of the net increase in immigrants

16:31David McWilliams: are immigrants from the rest of the world, from India, from Africa, from Pakistan. They are coming in mainly on work permits. That's the area that A, people are worried about, and B, it's the area where the state can't control it because the state gives out work permits. So are these temporary work permits? So these are transient immigrants? I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure because what you see is they're given work permits for a while, but of course they can stay and they should stay. And look, let's get things straight, John. The health service couldn't work without them. Agriculture couldn't work without them.

17:14David McWilliams: Many of them are essential, essential workers. But one thing is quite interesting. If you look at an FOI request, there was an FOI request on employees. What type of immigrants are coming here? Yeah. So in 2021, 57 % of all immigrants that were given work permits were what they called critical skilled permits. These are jobs that Irish people could not do, that we absolutely need them. They were doctors and nurses and scientists and stuff. So nearly 60 % of the immigrants five years ago were of a very high educational quality. That figure in the first half of this year is 30%. So the quality of the migrant in terms of their qualification has totally and utterly plumped it.

18:10David McWilliams: And that, I think, John, is something that we need to interrogate a lot because it means that if we're losing young, educated Irish people and if we are replacing them with non-educated foreigners, the likelihood is that the net cost of the society as we move forward is going to be significant because they won't pay as much tax. they'll probably much more likely be dependent on welfare as is the case in Denmark and Sweden and all these other countries and I think this is an issue that nobody kind of wants to touch in Ireland because it's got echoes of you know racism and this ism and that ism but the data the data is pretty explicit on what's going on.

18:57But but hang on a second though I mean while a lot of the immigrants mightn't hold degrees and educational qualifications, but many of them are still essential workers, as you said, in the health service, in agriculture, etc., etc. We still need people to do all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, but maybe they're not. Maybe this comes back to the old idea, right? Which is if we are running the economy incredibly hot, as economists say, If the growth rate's too strong, right, if we're absorbing immigrants, right, the question is, what are they all doing?

19:33David McWilliams: If people are coming in to work, you know, let's say as kitchen porters, as opposed to as doctors, we have a problem. Because if you look at immigration as a sort of a HR policy, you have a big company and the company needs to fit, okay, we need that type of person and that type of person and this type of person and this type of person, right? Then the quality of the immigrants should be as high as possible because they're joining the company, right? And the company gives them all sorts of benefits and protections and prospects and opportunities and all that stuff. Yeah, but are we not talking about we need the best kitchen porters and we need the best farm labourer?

20:17Do you know what I mean? As well as the doctors and professionals. No, because I think then you've got the question is,

20:24David McWilliams: what is the likelihood in the next downturn, which will happen, that those people remain employed? Very, very slight. Because they're on the margins already, right? So this is one of the dilemmas. And I suppose these are difficult conversations to have. You never want to go down the road of pointing the finger, pointing the finger of blame at somebody because they have a different skin colour, they speak differently and all that. But these are issues that have to be actually discussed. You know, is immigration, because we're going to come back to the housing market, but is immigration an obligation on the part of the country?

21:03Or is it an economic necessity? And if it is an economic necessity, are we future-proofing immigration for the next downturn? or are we actually almost ensuring that we're going to have a serious dilemma as the economy becomes more fragile, if the economy becomes more fragile? And that's why the quality of the migrant absolutely matters. Like the last thing you want in your country are lots and lots of people who can't speak the language, who don't understand the culture and who haven't gone to school. Particularly when the objective of Ireland since we were kids was everyone goes to school. The whole process of the education system was to try and increase what they call the human capital of the country, to increase the ability of people in Ireland to make a living.

21:53So you don't want to be doing that and then bringing in people who don't have those qualifications. Yeah. Because that will have intergenerational problems. They'll find it much harder to settle. Yadda, yadda, all that stuff. We spoke about this quite recently about, you know, we've created this highly educated society. And if the jobs and consequently the houses and all that kind of stuff, if they aren't available, they're going to go. They are ambitious people. They're well-educated people. And, you know, wages, salaries are higher elsewhere. And they also need to go off and reach their potential one way or the other.

22:34David McWilliams: This is the dilemma. What we know is because young Irish people are, even relative to rich European countries, very well educated, and they speak English, they are highly mobile. Yeah. They leave, as you say, not only at the first sight of the downturn, but they leave because the lifestyle that they expect, which should be commensurate with their qualifications, can't be delivered. Why? Because they can't get a home. So they're living with their mum and dad. So they leave, and the data now says what's coming in aren't doctors, nurses, scientists, Google workers, yada, yada, yada. But what's coming in are less well-educated.

23:15David McWilliams: So it's very clear. Only a fool would actually try and avoid thinking about the consequences of this. So I think we're going to do another podcast about this, which is on immigration as human resources policy. Because I think the evidence that's been revealed suggests that the complexion of immigration has changed from very educated, highly mobile, and ultimately, therefore, very, very treasured members of society to other ones. Yeah. Right? Those other ones who aren't as well educated, who are on the margins, who don't have the same human capital, are much more likely in a downturn not to be working.

24:03David McWilliams: They're much more likely to actually be dependent. And of course, all this feeds into the raw dilemma of housing, because that's the interface. Yeah. But Mike, just before you get into the housing element of it, I remember back in the 90s, I was going to emigrate to New Zealand. Oh, I remember that. But there was a point system. And because I just finished college in my environmental science degree, I got the points to go. So we ended up not going. But why can't we have a similar kind of system here? And the other thing I was going to ask you about is, you know, Ireland as a country, we can control our immigration to a point, but we're also part of the EU.

24:50So is it not more of a EU wide immigration policy that we need to strengthen?

24:57David McWilliams: Well, I think, you know, what we know is that a serious country protects its borders. That's the job of the country. That's one of the few essential jobs of a state. And you look at what's happening in the EU, there's a lot of confusion in the EU. Like you saw the reaction to the Cueta, the Sueta thing the other day in Spain and Morocco, whereas most of the EU members just said, we don't want this, right? We don't want open borders from Africa. And you take countries like Poland, they don't accept any immigrants in. Most of the Central European countries don't accept any immigrants. I think there's a big split in immigration.

25:37David McWilliams: You've got basically Western Europe, particularly Northwestern Europe, versus Eastern and Central Europe. And I think in the Eastern and Central European case, and because I spent a lot of time down there, they don't buy the idea of a debt to be repaid to Africa or Asia. Because they weren't the colonists. They were never colonized. So their view is like, we don't owe these guys anything. And it's like, they're not saying we don't like them, but it's saying we have no obligation to these people. And if they're coming, that's fine. But we need to make sure that the society or the economy has the resources.

26:17David McWilliams: And that's why the housing thing is so important, John. because I think that the big risk in Ireland is if we don't rebalance the demand and supply in the area of housing, immigrants will get blamed for the housing crisis and that will fuel the fire of all sorts of anti-immigrant racist parties. But the obligation is on the present administration to get it right, to take decisions that aren't hard, but that are commonsensical about the amount of people that should come into the country. Okay, so let's talk about that kind of intersection between immigration and housing a little bit more. But let's do that after a bit of this.

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29:28So, Mac, there is a worldwide shortage of housing. You know, every country seems to have a housing problem. But of course, what puts a lot more pressure on housing is the number of immigrants coming in. Talk to me a little bit about that and put some numbers and context behind all that. Yeah, well, just if you could imagine having an equation in your head. So housing demand, right, equals the natural increase in the population, which is, we said about 20 ,000, that is basically births minus deaths in every year, plus immigration, that's the new people coming in, divided by the average household size, and then plus what we call obsolescence.

30:17So the average household size in Ireland, which is the amount of people, and again, I'll explain this, when we were kids, there was like five kids in one house or seven kids in one house, right? That has collapsed. So the size of Irish households has collapsed almost to the European average. In the 2022 census, it was 2.74 people live in every home in Ireland. European average is 2.3 people live in every home. So we're moving down that way. Now, as that figure falls, the implication is you have to build more houses for every 10 citizens. That's the key. Right. So in the old days, if you had one house with 10 people living in it, now you have one house with two people living in it.

31:02This means for every 10 people, you need five houses. Yeah. So that's a big, significant figure, right? The natural population increase is 18 ,800. So that is where we're at in the Irish natural increase. obsolescence is about half a percent of the housing stock which means about half percent the housing stock falls down every year it's too old right that means we need about seven and a half thousand homes per year maybe let's say ten thousand just to cover obsolescence we have a latest completion figure of 37.8 thousand homes this year. So you can see that there is a higher demand because of the migrants than the amount of houses we can supply.

32:00Yeah. And of course, in Ireland, you have this massive deficit in housing because we didn't build any housing from 2008 in effect to 2020 after the crash. So what you've got to do is you've got to look at migration and see how many migrants can this country absorb in a realistic way in order to fix the housing crisis. Many would say you go to zero for five years and then you see where you are. but in that case the economy would crash because we need migrants. So the question then is how many migrants do we need? Back of the envelope calculations would say about 30 ,000 migrants added to the 20 ,000 new people plus the deficit of housing which is people who are living with their parents who don't want to live with their parents but have to because they can't live anywhere else.

33:03So we're looking at a net migration figure of about 30 ,000. At the moment, the net migration figure is about 50 ,000. Just to stand still, we would probably need to reduce that by 20 ,000. That is the max of it. And as long as we don't do that, we'll be chasing our tail when it comes to trying fixing the housing problem because we simply can't build enough houses to house the amount of people who are coming in here. And of course, what happens then is immigrant lads like we did in America will live five to a room. Yeah, that's not sustainable. So they will live in the three-bedroom house out in Blanchestown that the Irish family can't therefore live in because it's five lads paying more rent each.

33:53So suddenly the Irish family is living back with the mammy and is pissed off. and then they go on the housing list and they find on the housing list that they're also competing against poorer immigrants and they get more pissed off. And then, of course, what you feel is that then what you know is because there's such a critical housing crisis, houses that were also meant for previously working class people, old corporation estates that were built for working class people are now homes to barristers and solicitors, etc. because there has been the gentrification of those homes. So it also means that the former working class people get atomised.

34:37They have to live further out. They have to live out in Navon, Wicklow. They have to live in all the satellite towns. So that means that their sense of community is undermined as well. So everything comes back down to housing. And the only variable that the country can actually legally change is the amount of work permits we give out. Well, you know, I mean, there is the other problem as well of the likes of Airbnb. Oh, yeah. You know, the problem is we pride ourselves in our democracy and our free market economy and all the rest. Is that now, that free market economy kind of working against us?

35:19Because, I mean, what would solve, not solve, but what would help a lot is to ban the likes of Airbnb. be.

35:26David McWilliams: I think so. I think so. But again, it's more palatable to point the finger at an Irish person making a crust because it makes you feel better. Yeah. And say, do you know what? We need to actually stop immigration at this level. Because people say, oh, that sounds nasty. Are you sound right? But I think that there is a massive obligation on the part of the state to making sure that we get the economics right so that we don't just penalize Irish people making an extra crust on Airbnb while at the same time have, you know, over 100 ,000 migrants coming in every year. That's a big, big figure. It's a policy mix then you're talking about.

36:12David McWilliams: It's a policy mix. It's a policy mix in the same way that, you know, we were talking last week about resident committees and their power, the cavemen and these things. It's basically, if you are serious about solving any problem, whether it's a technical problem, a financial problem, a business problem, anything, you have to throw the kitchen sink at it. And nothing can be sacred and nothing can be untouched. And the figures we got yesterday from the CSO would suggest to me that we haven't actually looked at the policy in the round, that loads of different bits of Ireland are working in silos.

36:56David McWilliams: And because they're in silos, nobody's seen the big picture. And as a result of that, everybody's screaming and shouting with their own grievances. So the people who are suffering most are the younger Irish people who can't get a stake in society. And they're the highly, highly mobile ones. And they're the ones you read about all the time saying, look, I'm living in Italy, I want to come home, but I can't afford it. I've got a good job in Spain. I've got a good job in England. I'd love to come home. I come home at Christmas. I come home for weddings. It's a great laugh, but it doesn't work for me.

37:31David McWilliams: So there are the people who are suffering. Yeah. And of course, then along with, you know, if the country turns anti-immigrant, the other people who suffer, the migrants themselves. So in a way, you've got to figure out how do you protect us. So many platitudes in Ireland about obligations and about what we should do and what we shouldn't do. But if you look at the pragmatic reality, the more people that come into the country when we have an acute housing problem, the more severe the problems become. And in order to protect those living here or about to come here, we need to come up with a figure, just a figure and say, this is what is realistic for the next five years.

38:14David McWilliams: 30 ,000, 25 ,000, whatever. And then what will happen, John, is there will be a significant increase in wages at the lower end because the demand for those kitchen porters, the demand for those chefs, the demand for agricultural workers will mean that rather than paying for three or four more fellows coming in the minimum wage, the farmer has to pay the original fellow, whoever he is, twice as much. Yeah. And his wages will go up. And as a result of that, the wages of all working people will rise. And that is what we need. We need to rebalance the mix in Ireland towards wages, away from profit.

38:59David McWilliams: And one of the ways of doing that, ironically, is reducing immigration because working or poorer people always suffer economically in periods of high immigration. And that's why, for example, it's no great myth that the period where Americans did so well, you know that idea, the growth of the American middle classes in the 1950s and 1960s after the Second World War were also coincided with the lowest rates of immigration America had ever seen. So the Americans stopped taking in migrants in the 30s and didn't open up their doors again until the 80s. And lo and behold, what you found was a massive upswing in the prospects of working-class Americans.

39:43David McWilliams: Like, we know this happens all over. This is Economics 101. This is how it works. And so I think that, you know, it's interesting. The Danish socialists have become very, very attracted to reducing immigration because they have said that their job is to protect the interests of the working Danish people, both immigrant and non-immigrant. And as a result of that, politics in Denmark has changed dramatically. And the fascinating thing about Denmark is there is no significant far-right movement. It's the only country in Europe that doesn't have it. Why? Because the left-wing decided we're going to look after our own.

40:24David McWilliams: And maybe they should do the same in Ireland.

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