There is a basic social contract that underpins our society. It is not written down, but it is implicitly understood.

We ask young people to listen in school, play by the rules, get educated and go to work.

In return, they should be able to build a modest life for themselves, with a home, a bit of security and the chance to raise a family.

It is not an extravagant promise. Most people work five days so they can have two off. They take a couple of holidays a year and ask for little else.

Even during Ireland’s worst recessions, the prospect of a simple home was within reach.

Today, that promise is slipping through the fingers of our young people.

A warning from Kerry

I was in Lyreacrompane in north Kerry recently, a place that has absorbed wind turbines, conifer plantations, land abandonment and the slow draining away of its younger generation. Yet it remains a refuge for curlew, hen harrier and the fragile fabric of old rural life.

I met Tim O’Donoghue, a well-known presence on the landscape. He told me something that would break your heart.

Three young people from the area, all hoping to stay, work and raise families, had been refused planning permission.

“Imagine being told you cannot build due to visual intrusion,” he said, “while looking up at a 400m wind turbine.”

These are not speculators or holiday home hunters. They are local people, whose families shaped that land, its stone walls, its songs and its field names.

They are the people who might have a pint in the local pub, turn loose cattle back into a field or cut the meadows where songbirds live. If they cannot live there, what future does the place have?

A pattern

Travelling the west coast with work, I see the same story repeating. Young people leaving the Conamara Gaeltacht as houses turn into Airbnbs and planning is refused.

Oileán Chléire in west Cork, where the population continues to fall while house prices rise. A slow thinning out of the very people who hold the fabric of rural life together.

West Clare is no different. Renting, buying or building has become extremely difficult.

I was fortunate. After the last recession, I bought a derelict cottage, borrowed from banks and credit unions and rebuilt it with help from family and friends.

I was young and up for the challenge. Others are not - and nor should they have to be simply to have a roof over their head.

Now even that bottom-of-the-market fixer-upper route has vanished, with piles of stones in fields fetching extraordinary sums.

Historically, locals or blow-ins could live in these peripheral parts of the country if they accepted trade-offs, primarily lower earning potential.

Now remote work pits young locals against Dublin salaries. This, combined with growing demand and diminished supply, has created an acute pressure cooker.

Now remote work pits young locals against Dublin salaries

The deeper failure, however, is that our villages and towns are simply not being allowed to grow.

Places such as Miltown Malbay or Ennistymon could provide homes for thousands, offering some of the best quality of life in Europe, yet restrictive zoning and inadequate infrastructure, particularly water treatment capacity, mean they stagnate.

Above-shop units, once the beating hearts of towns, sit empty and only a handful of new homes are built each year. The result is predictable. People are pushed into the countryside, where they collide with a planning system that is necessary, but increasingly hard to defend.

Erosion of trust

The planning system has been pushed into an impossible position. A person can now do everything right and still be unable to secure a home, even on their own land, and that is corrosive, threatening the basic social contract.

If you have played by the rules and still cannot secure a basic home, something is clearly wrong. Your duty is first to your family and community, not to an abstract system that no longer serves either.

I am not advocating civil disobedience, but the frustration is understandable and once people lose faith that the system is fair, we are in serious trouble.

I see much of the planning rigidity we see today is an overcorrection to real abuses in the past. Developments on floodplains and headlands, gaudy mansions, ribbons of bungalows, scattershot holiday homes and local-need permissions granted and then flipped on, all feed distrust.

Communities share responsibility as well, with good houses allowed to fall derelict rather than be renovated, rented or sold. Many in these communities also embraced Airbnb, further diminishing housing supply.

This is not an argument against planning. If anything, we are here because of a lack of planning in its most literal sense. But the system must evolve.

Today, we need a planning approach that favours those committed to an area and pushes back against speculation, one that balances environmental integrity with cultural continuity. Medium-density development in towns and villages, ambitious zoning and openness to innovative, cost-effective building techniques must all be on the table. It's a crisis and I don't believe we have the time to simply “wait for the next county development plan”.

One-off housing

Ireland currently has about 420,000 one-off houses. This is not an anomaly. It is the existing and historical pattern of rural settlement.

There are challenges, including septic tank pollution and the cost of delivering services. But there are also positive realities.

Unlike the UK, our countryside is not the preserve of the wealthy. It is how I grew up and it is a beautiful way to live.

There is a fair conversation to be had about inefficiency and cost. But for young people without other options, who wish to commit to a place, we should move heaven and earth to make it possible.

Cost of inaction

If we do not act decisively, we risk hollowing out the very places where we claim to value farming, the Irish language, biodiversity and community. Although this article focuses on rural Ireland, the housing crisis is universal. This is a moment of real peril.

Ireland is wealthy on paper, but that means little to many young adults. A single person earning €40,000 to €50,000 has almost no chance of owning a home.

The choice is emigration or spending your best years in your parents' spare room. The consequences are visible, including delayed families, weakened communities and, for some, particularly young men, a retreat into drugs, gambling or online extremism.

As someone who has been very lucky in regard to housing and family, I hate to think others would be denied some of life’s most rewarding moments.

A sustainable future needs people.

If we want healthy GAA clubs, working farms, thriving Gaeltacht communities and hands for nature restoration, we must make it possible for young people to build a life where they come from.

Rural Ireland is not a museum. It is a living culture, messy, flawed and beautiful. Its survival depends on the next generation, the very people now being told there is no room for them.

We need to restore the quiet social contract. Play your part, work hard, be decent and you will have a future here.

Ray Ó Foghlú is an environmental scientist and woodland conservationist. He is the farm programmes co-ordinator with the Hometree charity.