Irish Examiner view: Official failings are a real betrayal of the people

Thousands of homes forced to pay for their own sewage treatment plants is another example of a dysfunctional structure within this state

Thousands of families are paying for sewage treatment due to a change of rules with Irish Water. 

The idea of social solidarity, of supportive cohesion can seem one of those optional, nebulous ideas until circumstances decree that we must rely on it. 

That truth has been brought home in the most dramatic, disheartening and regular ways to the generations trying to secure a home in a rich society — this one — that tolerates a market-contrived housing crisis. Their ordeal has in many instances been exacerbated by ever fewer lenders who conspire against them through instruments like tracker mortgages. As those thousands of homeowners faced with huge bills to fireproof apartments approved, if only virtually, by regulators understand all too well there is a dog-eat-dog culture alive in our dysfunctional housing market.