Older Irish urban dwellers not opting for country living, survey finds
New research has found very few older people in Ireland are downsizing to live in a smaller home.
The ESRI study also found no evidence of retired people in urban areas wanting to sell up to buy a cheaper home in rural Ireland.
The research was carried out among 8,000 people living here over the age of 50 to find out if incentives should be offered to older people to free up larger homes.
The ESRI was trying to establish if incentives should be offered to encourage older people to move to smaller homes.
However their Director Alan Barrett believes encouraging the elderly to downsize would not solve our current housing shortage.
"One thing we noticed is that of the people, the older people, who moved, very very few of them did actually sort of trade down to smaller houses and very very few of them seemed to move from urban to rural locations," he said.
"So there wasn't much mobility there that would suggest that big houses in urban areas were being freed up for younger people."
He added: "There's a big proportion of older people who live alone, but they actually live in relatively smaller houses.
"Now there are couples who do live in larger houses in pretty big numbers ... but the picture is a little bit mixed.
"The the other thing we looked at is whether or not older people do actually move, and between 2010 and 2012, there was very, very little movement amongst this group, and it was kind of true that there was little movement among other groups as well."
