Sir, – I hear some talk regarding a proposed change to our Constitution to provide a right to a house. Sure, why not? Doesn’t everyone need a house? After all, we have free water, so why stop there? Now, if you have a house, doesn’t everyone need electricity? Free electricity. Throw in free telephone and television. The house will need a makeover every five years – let’s have that also. House insurance and anything else you can think of? Why not?
We now seem to have a society that feels that it is entitled to everything and responsible for nothing. The easiest thing in the world is spending someone else’s money, except in this case the State does not have the funding for this kind of madness and it will not have it any time soon. Even if it did, the principle of the proposal is just plain wrong. It is furthering the notion of dependency and a “hand-out” mentality and it is militating against the development of a self-sufficient environment where people should feel that if something is worth having, it is worth working for. – Yours, etc,
DAVID RYAN,
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.