The countryside has undergone major transformations over recent decades as a result of global economic restructuring, state intervention in agriculture, and changing demographies. These changes are often contested and the source of conflict and tensions, which in Ireland have manifested in the debate on living in the countryside. The Irish rural housing debate is an illustration of wider rural change in a country with a strong tradition of farming on small to medium sized holdings, each owner-occupied. In addition, the media popularisation of the debate, rather than establishing the facts of rural housing, has rested In anecdote and emphasised the emotive. The housing debate strongly contests issues, such as who has the right to live in the countryside, how traditional settlement patterns can be sustained into the future - and indeed, what these traditional patterns are to begin with - and what interventions should be made in relation to rural housing developments. In order to inform the contested discourse of living in the countryside this thesis adopts a multi-scale, multi-method approach for the examination of rural housing in Ireland that investigates the complex relationship between settlement patterns, policy interventions and community dynamics. This involves an examination of broad scale, national data for dispersed dwellings in the countryside. The second stage of the methodology explores the institutional context within which Irish rural settlement patterns operate, critically assessing the hierarchy of spatial planning policies and processes from European to local levels. Finally, the third stage investigates local, small scale housing processes in three contrasting study areas. The overall objective of the thesis is to gather together a body of evidence that will advance our understanding of the nature and characteristics of contemporary rural housing In Ireland, thus facilitating the advancement of the rural housing debate in Ireland and contributing to the wider literature.