Television is all about giving people what they want. If viewers liked that thing, goes the thinking, then they’ll also like this thing, so let’s give them as much of this thing as possible for as long as possible.

What Irish viewers seem to want, and in puzzlingly large numbers, are property shows. The country is mired in the worst housing and homelessness crisis in its history, the legacy of three decades during which successive governments neglected their duty to build enough social housing, leaving the delivery of new houses in the hands of profit-driven property developers.