Social housing – then and now

Sir, – Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has stated that Nama would provide 20,000 houses, including 2,000 social housing units, between now and 2020, and he hoped the private sector would also contribute ("Government seeking solutions to issue of soaring rents, says Noonan", October 14th).

This implies that social housing would constitute 10 per cent of the total. It is also unlikely that the private sector will be contributing much in the line of social housing! It is interesting to compare the different emphasis on social housing envisaged by Mr Noonan with that of the 1930s and 1940s. Ireland was a very impoverished country throughout those decades. Yet social housing in the 1930s amounted to 60 per cent of total house construction, with the figure rising to 70 per cent in the 1940s. – Yours, etc,

ALBERT COLLINS,

Cork.