Sir, - I was awakened this morning at 4.55 a.m. by the sound of a rat trying to make its way up through my floorboards only inches from my head. This rodent's invasion of my apartment - in a "respectable" part of Dublin - has come this far, though today it is exactly two weeks since I informed my landlord of the problem.
It makes me wonder, as a foreigner, why it is that in Ireland working people in their late twenties cannot find decent, semi-permanent accommodation unless they can afford a mortgage of £120,000. Why do they find themselves at the mercy of private landlords, in circumstances which often force them to move from place to place on short-term leases?
In my country of origin - Denmark - the 1930s Workers Movements secured tenants' rights by establishing independent housing co-operatives where financial gains from rent went back into the maintenance of holdings rather than straight to a private bank account. Ever since then, hundreds of thousands of people have lived happily in high-quality flats and apartments, often considering these their home for life.
In that some decade in Ireland I am told, de Valera was struggling to avoid an infestation of evils of the modern world - i.e. capitalism and socialism. It seems to me that where he did not entirely succeed in keeping out the former, he perhaps managed a little too well in the case of the latter.
Hurrah for Denmark's Workers' Movement. If nothing else, it managed to keep the country's apartments vermin free. - Yours, etc., Annette Jorgensen
Oaklands Park, Dublin 4.