Sir, – In light of the housing emergency it is perhaps worth contrasting the approach to the crisis by the State in the early 20th century compared with the present.
Taking the town where I live, Tralee, as an example, in the early 20th century housing conditions for the working class were appalling. On Francis Street (Walpole Lane), off Castle Street, 203 people were living in just 20 houses and in one instance two families comprising eight people shared a single room.
Families were forced to live in rooms with no furniture, where they would sleep on the floor with straw for bedding.
The Kerryman reported that Tralee Trades and Labour Council at its monthly meeting of December 1919 passed a resolution “demanding a general improvement in the standard of housing in the town” and the construction “of at least 800 new houses built by the state and the Urban District Council by direct labour and at the national expense”.
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In June 1920 Tralee UDC applied for a state loan of £145,000 to construct 150 houses of various sizes and to include a bathroom and “will be semidetached and each will have a garden attached. Provision will also be made for three plantations and playgrounds”.
Rents were fixed at a maximum of 13 shillings and six pence with 32 shillings per week being the average minimum wage for working class adult males by 1921.
Tralee did witness a gradual improvement in living conditions by 1926, though there remained 209 families living in one-roomed accommodation compared with 268 in 1911.
Ireland is now a far wealthier country yet governments continue to fail to end the housing emergency because of a reliance on private developers and an obsession with free market ideology. – Yours, etc,
KIERAN McNULTY,
Tralee,
Co Kerry.