Irish Examiner view: Decisive leadership needed to address challenges in building new homes

The new year has brought little comfort to those seeking to get on the property ladder, as the general expectation seems to be that house prices will continue to rise, in the short term at least.

A recurring refrain in debates on our housing and accommodation crisis has been to hark back to the 1930s, when local authorities were able to construct large-scale public housing schemes across the country, even though Ireland was far poorer then as a State, relatively speaking, not to mention the international economic depression of the time.