Toxic impact of building societies

THE research published by the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) is described in your editorial (July 30) as “a scathing and unambiguous attack on the role of politicians” in the housing debacle.

The report highlights how ludicrous fiscal policy and reckless planning decisions resulted in thousands of uninhabited and unwanted, exorbitantly priced, houses being built in hundreds of estates at undesired, remote and poorly serviced locations across the country. It is a pity that the report did not also shine a tangential bright light on the toxic and corrosive impact of building societies, driven by the legislation governing them.

When environment minister, Pádraig Flynn, was steering the Building Societies Bill 1989 through the Oireachtas in February of that year he said that it would “set very few boundaries to the future and scope of societies”. This included the empowering of building societies to acquire, hold, dispose of and develop land where the land is used for commercial purposes — other than residential.