Sir, – The laudable and correct decision to make efforts to house incoming refugees is a further demonstration of the Government’s capacity to intervene in market dynamics when a crisis arises. Efforts such as funding housing schemes for “own-door accommodation”, changing planning laws and asking councils to identify vacant properties are all actions which would have seemed entirely logical to pursue at any point in the last 10 years. As with the mica scandal, it seems that there are many levers, and billions of euro, available to correct faults in the market but the Government has simply chosen not to utilise these until it is politically expedient to do so, or it has absolutely no other avenue to pursue. Again, this is not to criticise the Government for addressing these problems, but to highlight that these actions could have saved large swathes of the population a large amount of distress had they been actioned sooner – and it seems this was possible all along. – Yours, etc,
COLM DOYLE,
Dublin 7.