Sir, – Cllr Malcolm Byrne (Letters, September 30th) attempts to compare the current Government's home building record over the past nine years unfavourably with that of the Fianna Fáil-led coalition over the preceding years.
Lest we forget, in 1997 the incoming Fianna Fáil-led coalition had inherited from the outgoing Fine Gael-led Rainbow Coalition a healthy current budget surplus.
By 2011, after 14 years of unbroken Fianna Fáil rule, this had morphed into a staggering €20 billion deficit in the public finances, necessitating one of the biggest bailouts in history and the intervention of the troika circa 2009 to supervise the running of our economy.
The result was savage but necessary austerity.
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It was a simple enough task to build local authority houses when the country was awash with money generated largely by receipts from an unregulated and unsustainable developer-led building boom during this 14 year period of egregious Fianna Fáil mismanagement of our economy. But for the two administrations tasked since 2011 with righting the public finances and restoring our economy to a sustainable and healthy state, the challenge posed is entirely different.
Valid comparisons of Government records in any sphere must have regard to context and known facts. – Yours, etc,
PJ McDERMOTT,
Westport,
Co Mayo.