When Jack Grindley saw Yale University students being arrested at pro-Palestine protests in his native New Haven last year, he began thinking about going abroad to study. The 17-year-old landed on Ireland.
“I’m less worried about speaking my mind,” the incoming University College Dublin student said of his new home. “Especially given how [US president Donald] Trump is trying to intervene in our education system.”
Grindley is part of a growing movement of Americans who, for political, financial and personal reasons, are planning to study in Ireland.
And like others who intend to stay for more than a year, he’ll not only have to deal with the usual challenges of homesickness and cultural shock, but also the very Irish predicament of finding a place to live in one of the world’s toughest housing markets.
As of August, the number of Americans accepting offers for graduate courses starting this academic year at Trinity College Dublin rose 40 per cent over the previous year. For undergraduate courses at the school, the percentage of Americans accepting offers is up 6 per cent. Similar trends are playing out across the country: just before the start of the school year, the University of Limerick reported that 16 per cent more Americans were enrolling compared to the previous year, and at the University of Galway, applications from the US jumped 50 per cent for 2025 compared with 2024.
Ireland is not the only European country trying to capitalise on an exodus of students from the US, but it does have several advantages: English is the predominant language, and one in six American citizens identify as having Irish heritage.
While tuition fees are more expensive for international students than Irish or European ones, they still can be significantly cheaper than in the US.
Ireland is also among the most pro-Palestinian countries in western Europe – a factor that came up repeatedly in interviews with young Americans who had decided to study there, and who felt they were being silenced at home.
In Ireland, sympathies with the Palestinian people run deep over what some see as shared colonial struggles. Unlike in other countries, university administrations have been willing to engage with pro-Palestinian student campaigns. Last year Trinity pledged to divest from Israeli companies active in the territories.
But before incoming Americans are able to engage in campus life, they need to find a place to live. Kristin Hamaker, director of college programmes at admissions consultancy Beyond the States, also noted that unlike most universities in Europe, “Irish colleges tend to have more amenities for US students and own their own student housing.”
For a country in the thick of a serious housing crisis, guaranteed accommodation is a huge deal – but it’s typically only offered to first years, and even then can be oversubscribed. After that, students are left to fend for themselves.
While Ireland’s housing shortage originated with the 2008 global financial crash, which destroyed the country’s economy and halted new-build construction, the situation has continued to escalate. Soaring construction prices, planning delays and uncertainty around rent control policies have made it harder than ever to find housing.
Makena Margolin, a recent Trinity graduate from Long Beach, California, recalls the challenge of securing a place to live before her second year. After looking for almost a month, she “ended up finding something on some kind of random Facebook group, but only two weeks before term started”. And that, she added, was only a room, not a whole apartment.
Ireland’s housing crunch has supercharged the market for purpose-built student housing – accommodations built by private developers specifically for students.
The sector is “really lucrative”, says Lorcan Sirr, a senior lecturer in housing at Technological University Dublin. “If a site comes up near a campus, investors will knock each other out trying to outbid each other.”
That’s eased pressure but also raised concerns about affordability. “Whatever they pay for the site sets the market price for land in that area,” says Sirr. “It does have an inflationary impact.”
Nicholas Buckley is an incoming first year at Trinity who plans to study economics and Spanish. Looking for a place to live while relocating from New Jersey was a “stressful process”, he says, but he eventually found a spot in a double room in privately run student housing.
Although relieved, Buckley is not happy about having to pay more than €300 per week. “Most accommodations filled up quickly,” he says, “so I didn’t have a choice but to rent the pricey room.”
According to University College Dublin, students spend an average of just over €1,000 per month on rent, making Buckley’s higher than average. Still, demand for the building’s 1,000 beds is outpacing supply – potential renters now have to go through a wait-list.
To locals, such prices can seem out of reach, especially since signing a new lease for an entire home or apartment in Ireland cost nearly €2,200 a month as of the end of last year.
The Government acknowledges that adding supply would ease overall pressure on the market, and has taken measures to lure back developers, who had largely stopped building rental apartments in Ireland.
In June, authorities changed the country’s rent control policy, which caps price increases at 2 per cent a year, to exempt newly built apartments.
The move, which goes into effect next March, leaves one big question open – whether purpose-built student housing would also be exempt from the 2 per cent ceiling. That uncertainty has developers anxious to see what will happen. The Department of Housing said that officials were working on legislation to determine how pricing for student housing would be regulated, but declined to provide details of what that might look like.
In the meantime, students still need places to live.
Margolin is again back on the rental market, trying to find an apartment to share with an American friend entering her final year at Trinity. Until they do, they’re staying in an Airbnb.
“We’ve put in inquiries on Daft, rent.ie, and the individual listing agent sites, and out of 48 applications, we’ve only viewed three. It’s brutal out here, as Olivia Rodrigo would say.”
Grindley, the student from New Haven, is set for the first year – his university will provide him with housing. But after that, he’ll be on his own. – Bloomberg
