Estate should have been handed over for social housing

It is tragic to hear of a housing estate in Tullow, Co Carlow, which took millions if not billions of working class Irish savings and pensions, all held in banks in credit union bonds, deposit, and savings accounts, being sold for €150,000, the price of a small house in the country.

Is there a cabal in the new Government or in Nama? Is this the elitist exclusivist middle class looking after itself again?

The people of Ireland, especially the working class, the ordinary people on low wage jobs and social welfare deserve more than this.

Could not the Government have held on to any bankrupt estate for the purpose of social housing or housing co-ops.

In spring of this year the Social Justice Department of UCD held a conference on cooperatives and ‘Member-Owned Enterprises’ as an alternative form of economics suitable for Ireland.

The Government should, alongside a major review of its economic ethos adopt a visionary ‘People First’ or ‘Social Democratic’ economic ethos and abandon the ‘ultra liberal’ or ‘neo-liberal’ ethos they unconsciously adopt.

They could begin with the bankrupt housing estates.

We, the unemployed, could finish these houses while working on Social Employment Schemes and then live in them because, essentially it was our money the developers used in the first place.

Even if we set up co-ops, we, the people, will still be straddled with the huge debts of the developers, but at least the assets, our assets — the houses and the land they are built on — willbe ours as a community and not once again in the hands of some deluded Irish business people and developers.

Michael Timlin

Quignalecka

Ballina

Co Mayo