Response to our housing crisis - Building new crisis is not a solution

LAST week’s figures, which show that nearly 8,000 citizens of this rich Republic — a third of them children — do not have a home, are as profound a matrix of social and political failure as any civilised, compassionate society should tolerate.

The reasons are myriad, but they are rooted in the deliberate decision to trust the market to supply adequate social housing, when local authorities were ordered to abandon that obligation.

The response is ongoing and, for all sorts of reasons, slower than it might be. It may also be utterly wrongheaded.