The study is based on analyses of survey data from the Household Budget Survey, the European Community Household Panel Survey and the Living in Ireland (LII) Survey and compliments an earlier Combat Poverty study that examined living conditions in the main component of Irish social housing – local authority housing estates.1 This study builds on that earlier work by considering housing from a macro and a comparative perspective, focusing on housing tenure and on issues of housing poverty and wealth. This study also contributes to the debate about future directions in Irish social expenditure, which has been initiated in a recent Combat Poverty policy paper2 that showed that the Irish welfare state lags behind the level of economic development achieved over the past decade, contributing to widening income differentials and macroeconomic inefficiency.