Local authorities are key to sorting out our housing mess

Letters to the Editor

Builders say they experience difficulties in getting staff. Photo: Jonathan Law. Pic: Ben Birchall/PA

February 28 2023 02:30 AM

I agree fully with Ed Toal (‘Handing over our housing needs to the private sector will only limit supply and push up prices’, Letters, February 25). The provision of housing should be given back to where it was successful for the first 60 years of our State : the local authorities.

Builders complain about the difficulty of getting staff. All that is on offer for builders is occasional work if there is construction in their area or near their homes.

From the foundation of the State until around 1980, houses were built by the local authorities, using their own permanent, pensionable employees.

If the local authorities were to recruit again, there would be an avalanche of applications.

I was employed by Dublin County Council from 1952 to 1958 and we had 700-750 employees. This was before Roadstone and other similar contractors were in business. Council employees built houses, repaired empty houses and repaired roads

Their wages were £4 10s per week, plus an extra five shillings if they had to use a bicycle in their work. The job was also pensionable.

Hugh Duffy

Cleggan, Co Galway

Letters to the Editor: Opinion Handing over our housing needs to the private sector will only limit supply and push prices up

TV commentary is putting me off watching golf on TV

I watched a lot of golf on TV during the pandemic – and over this weekend – and largely what is on our screens is a bunker and putting competition.

That, and the endless commentary trying to talk it up.

“Silence is golden,” sang The Tremeloes in the 60s – great advice for the visual media.

Golf on TV is in danger of going the same way as snooker and show jumping – both highly popular in the past.

Michael Foley

Rathmines Dublin 6

We should listen to those who question government motives

Members of Nphet are admitting that our Covid approach was too harsh.

Members of the Government are claiming they “made mistakes” on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The Taoiseach is flip-flopping between firm and hard, on the one hand, and a free-for-all on migration.

When some people had the nerve to question the wisdom of government positions on these issues at the time, they were widely denounced as disloyal, or dangerous sappers out to undermine Ireland, and they were implored to pull on their green jerseys like everyone else.

So now that so many recent sacred cows have been dispensed with, can we start questioning other sacrosanct government policies? Perhaps those same people are right again and Helen McEntee’s hate speech bill isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be.

And what about a re-examination of the pros and cons of carbon tax and the carbon credits system?

Killian Foley-Walsh

Kilkenny city

Suzanne Breen: Opinion Sinn Féin cannot escape legacy with IRA – no matter how hard its leaders try

Irish mammies the reason for our success as a nation

I recently had the pleasure of talking to two young people. Without doubt, you could not beat these young people for their manners or their ability to communicate. This is down to a very underestimated person in our society – the Irish mammy.

It was William Wordsworth who said “the child is the father of the man”, but it is mainly the mother who instils these virtues in her children – many times forsaking her own career to be there for her family.

We talk about how successful this country has become, how we have great entrepreneurs and a stable country but we must remember that it all starts in the home with the greatest teachers of all, our mothers, who learnt it from their own mothers.

Dr Aidan Hampson

Artane, Dublin 5

Gruesome murder details do not make for easy reading

I wish to comment on Louise Watt’s article (‘Murdered model’s (28) missing head found in soup pot’, Irish Independent, February 27).It made for stark reading.

But do we want to be told the gory details of such a murder?

Is there not enough inhumanity in the world without adding to it?

Leo Gormley

Dundalk, Co Louth

Tired of wrangling the RTÉ Player? Offer it up…

A timely reminder to readers who may wish to do penance for their sins during this season of Lent that the RTÉ Player provides the perfect opportunity.

It is an inexplicably woeful and painful experience.

Cyril Gillen

Drogheda, Co Louth