Sir, – A median house price of €500,000 in Dublin is not a market fluctuation. It is a policy outcome.
When ordinary earners cannot afford extraordinary home prices, the problem is not individual effort. It is design. For years, Government policy has treated housing primarily as an investment asset. Homes are now routinely referred to as “housing units”, property is a smart commodity rather than shelter ... and “the people who get up in the morning” despair. This is what happens when basic needs are allowed to be investment opportunities.
We are told the situation is complex. It is not. If design consistently produces €500,000 homes in a city where average salaries cannot sustain them, then that design needs to be reshaped. Government housing policy is not neutral and it reflects priorities. At present, those priorities are failing ordinary earners.
This is not a generational complaint; it is a warning. A society that prices teachers, nurses, librarians, civil servants, hospitality workers, and young professionals out of stable housing undermines its own foundations.
RM Block
Voters who continue to endorse the status quo should consider who the current design serves – and who it excludes. Politicians, landlords, and investors do not a community make. – Yours, etc,
Patrick Keegan,
Arran Quay,
Dublin 1.
