The ESRI's report on housing affordability and ownership contains a plethora of nuggets that different people will find interesting, each for their own unique reasons.
Some of the findings for Ireland are positive, others far less so, particularly when viewed in the context of comparison to 14 other European countries.
For younger people who are desperate to own or even rent their own home, there is definitive proof in black and white that they are struggling.
The report finds that almost 80% of people who are aged over 40 here own their own home – a remarkable figure when you think about it.
But in contrast, just a third of adults under the age of 40 are homeowners.
What’s more, the findings confirm that Ireland is unusual in this regard, with the gap between young and old homeowners coming in as second highest out of 15 European countries included in the research.
Proof that our strained housing market, where young people find it increasingly difficult to gather the funds to put a deposit on a house and get a mortgage, has created a chasm between the generations which is going to be hard to bridge.
The data also confirms what those under the age of 34 already know all too well - that more and more of them are finding they have little choice but to remain living at home with parents for longer.
Indeed, over one-in-four young adults aged 25-34 in Ireland stayed living with Mom and Pop in 2019.
What’s more, Ireland saw the largest rise in this share between 2015 and 2019 – again a symptom of the dysfunctional housing market that is proving hard to treat.
It is not a situation which either the "children" or indeed their parents want in most cases – but one forced on them by necessity as younger generations become squeezed out of home ownership.
What was once a given for all, a right of passage, has now become a dream for many.
When it comes to housing affordability, the findings are also interesting, but perhaps a little more surprising too.
In general, it was found that Irish households do not have to spend a higher proportion of their income on housing than those in other parts of Europe.
On average, Irish households pay a fifth of their net income on the cost of their home – which on the face of it doesn't seem all that much.
Just 15% typically have to shell out more than a third of their income on housing, whereas the equivalent level elsewhere in Europe is 20%, the paper claimed.
While when it comes to the proportion of households who pay more than 40% of their income on housing, Ireland is broadly in line with other European states at 8%.
However, lone parent families face higher housing-payment-cost-to-income ratios in Ireland than elsewhere.
In the round those statistics will perhaps come as a surprise to many people in the context of the prevailing narrative coming from politicians, interest groups, consumers and the media around the soaring cost of mortgages and rent.
But they do show that while we undoubtedly have problems around the cost of housing here, we are not alone in Europe in facing those challenges.
That said, averages only tell a big picture story and the nuances are only found by drilling deeper into the data.
And when the authors did, it became apparent that the reason Irish households who rent have the lowest rent-to-income ratios on average, is because of State supports.
The Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and other measures that are in place to help those with lower incomes to deal with the affordability pressures caused by an overheating rental market are having the effect of reducing the proportion of income that those with less have to spend on keeping a roof over their head.
But that caveat only applies to those on lower incomes – not to the more than half of private sector renters who do not receive housing supports and fall within middle to high income bands.
The result is that some 14% of renters in Ireland who could be considered to have middle to high incomes pay over 30% of what they earn on rent, versus 3% on average in the 14 other countries studied.
While 16% of renters in the third income quintile here pay more than 30% of income on rent compared to 9% on average elsewhere.
Perhaps another example of what has been dubbed "the squeezed middle" by policy-makers who argue that while there are sufficient supports in place to assist those with low incomes, those in the middle income bracket are financially more constrained from all sides.
Another skewing factor in the mix is that because so many lower income people here (54%) own their own home outright, particularly older people, it means half of these low-income households don’t have to pay for housing at all and therefore are not captured by the research.
One thing to keep in mind when considering the findings of this study is that the data used in it was gathered by the EU statistics agency, Eurostat, in 2019.
Much has changed in the four years that have passed – rents have increased, so too have house prices.
Incomes have risen too, but not by as much.
Plus the cost of most other goods and services has increased significantly in that time, particularly over the last 18 months.
There has also been a considerable crunch in supply of both rental homes and housing available to buy.
That means that however good or bad the situation may have been around housing affordability and ownership back when the data was first captured, its likely to be far worse today.
