Madam, - Think how difficult it is to buy a house today for a young person in Dublin.
Now imagine how much worse it would be had we been blessed with a Mediterranean climate where we had to compete with other Europeans for our homes. Had they started buying up vast swathes of prime coastal development areas and city heartlands, we would most definitely have labelled them parasitic land grabbers and even thieves.
We may possibly have blamed the situation (wrongly of course) on a post-colonial mindset. How, then, can we justify the distortion of other economies and societies like those of Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey by the purchase of property there?
In years to come the native people will feel they have been cheated of their land, their culture and with the transient tourist trade, their community spirit.
Irish people above all should realise that absentee landlords do not build fair societies.
Certainly in the short term their economies will improve with the construction industry but in the long term it is only the Irish investors who will benefit, at the expense of struggling nations. - Yours, etc,
FIONA DILLON, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.