China has had a housing crisis for a long time. [1][2][3]

China definitely has radically higher inequality than Ireland. Plausibly no large country in world history has ever had greater inequality. They span from their top 1% which is nearly as rich as the 1% in the US, down to their bottom 20% which are among the poorest people on the planet ($1-$3 per day poverty).

[2013] "China Has the Most Unaffordable Housing in the World"

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/china-h...

"From June 2015 through the end of last year, the 100 City Price Index, published by SouFun Holdings Ltd., rose 31 percent to nearly $202 per square foot. That's 38 percent higher than the median price per square foot in the U.S., where per-capita income is more than 700 percent higher than in China. Not surprisingly, this has put homeownership out of reach for most Chinese."

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china...

"But the impressive size and wealth of the propertied class belies the growing strains plaguing new home buyers. The country now has some of the least affordable housing markets in the world. The ratio of median home price to median income, a common measure of affordability, in most first-tier cities has soared to higher than that of London."

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/opinion/chinas-real-estat...

Markets fail : without intervention economic activity aggregates and centralises. There are three responses that are possible. 1) You can "let the market sort it out" - but in the limit you end up with Mexico City and a very hard issue of transport and quality of life in the suburbs. In addition "the market" will optimise to local optima... Flats are built with 1 or 2 bedrooms because that's what young professionals want, or can afford. In London if all new builds were mandated to be built as multiple (min 4) 3 large bedrooms (325m^2) units, the demographics and loci of the current market would be very altered, family life would become more practical for many and there would be much less of a flight to commuting and more community in places like The City and Westminster. 2) You can say no to more housing and the untrammelled market and do nothing (or little) to deal with the over demand; this means that you have a "nice for the elite" city (Manhattan, London, Dublin) that lots of people would love to live in but few can afford. 3) You could* intervene with state planning and move some of the locus of economic activity to other centres. For example in Ireland a high speed rail line could connect Dublin and Belfast and could alter the economic balance between the two (of course they are in different countries and soon different economic systems!) In the UK investment in the transport infrastructure in the Northwest (for example high capacity urban rail links between Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Bolton and Preston) could create an alternative focus to London and enable substantial relief for the current housing crisis because the urban infrastructure required to house people at a high quality of life (schools, colleges, parks, leisure centres, restaurants, theatres, culture and community) exist.

My point is that letting the market build housing is an effective intervention up to a point; but it's not the only option by a long jaunt.

Also market led building will result in a further transfer of wealth to land owners...

China absolutely has a 'housing crisis' in the sense that house prices have skyrocketed past what a good dual middle class income can possibly hope to save for.

First-tier city real estate has comparable price per square area as NYC, London, or the Bay Area, while the average income in China is still a third or a fourth what it is in the West.

ICT workers have higher disposable income and outbid Irish nationals your counter question should be "oh, like in S.F." or do you disbelieve the effect of ICT work on bay area rents?