The narrative is set by the media and they tend to frame everything in an emotive human interest context.
That said I think the main problem is the electorate.
Agreed! There's a really poor understanding & the great recession actually exacerbated that misunderstanding because there was a tendency to simply blame banks outright instead of looking at what caused that to happen. (Aka, entry into the system of non Irish banks using collateralised debt on a grand scale before Irish institutions realised they could do exactly the same).
Most of us also seem to think that the constraint on the supply of services and infrastructure is always money whereas the constraint in the Irish economy is labour. Labour productivity in the State sector is lower than the private sector so the more the State spends and the bigger the State gets the more inefficiency is baked into the economy.
This is nowhere more obvious than the shortage of bus drivers - Dublin Bus starting salary is nearly 44k, not including benefits, with pay scale of 6 years - 51k within 6 years.
Construction sector salaries for 3rd/4th year apprentices now over 40k - again a very tidy salary for someone likely to be 20 or 21.
That's just starting salaries. Agreed its a lot lower for some public sector roles, but there's a lot of well paid jobs out there for young people, with good conditions likely to only improve over time.
A couple with a combined income of 86k would have a take home pay of 6k a month - that's one of the reasons rents for 1-2 bed units in Dublin are 2k a month - there's a large market of people who can just about manage that. Such a couple as the one in my example (going on pwc tax calc, taking into account rent credit & assuming they pay a little into a pension & get health insurance), would have 4k left over after paying rent.
When myself & my ex were renting in the mid 00s, between us we had barely that before rent, never mind after it. If such a couple put 750 a month away & scrimped a bit they'd have 36000 saved in 2 years, which if they were happy to live somewhere like North County Dublin would get them a house.
Part of our problem is simple population growth and a lack of willingness to countenance or plan for it. The reasons why are obvious - there's always someone to object to literally everything and the perfect is always the enemy of the good, resulting in nothing being done at all.
And there's a couple of derelict homes behind my estate that routinely put in a PP every 2 years, there's an outcry from the comfortably housed homeowners in my estate in their 450k+ homes, especially if the word "apartments" gets mentioned, that ensures those houses remain derelict. Everyone who owns any kind of property in this country is part of the huge interest group silently willing on the rise in land/property values ad infinitum, while decrying the housing crisis, but making sure that submissions are made or judicial reviews donated to when actual plans to build en masse actually occur.
