Housing crisis and political accountability

Sir, – I find Michael McDowell’s opinion pieces in The Irish Times generally well informed and of interest. While I do not agree with him on some issues, he is always worth reading.

I was surprised, however, by his recent column (“What’s the biggest problem of the housing crisis? It’s the Department of Housing”, Opinion & Analysis, June 5th) about the Department of Housing and the challenges facing the country on housing. Simply holding the department and its civil servants responsible for what he views as failings in key policy decisions on housing over the past 15 years is very questionable. Indeed, it is at least debatable whether the policy decisions referred to by your columnist were in fact justified or not. But leaving consideration of those issues to one side, all the policy decisions concerned would have involved, not only ministerial, but Government consideration and approval. The logic of the position advanced in the column seems to be that Ministers are the passive recipients of policy advice from officials that they are unable or unwilling to change or reject. This is patently not the case in respect of both successive Ministers for Housing and their Government colleagues. To paraphrase Harry Truman, right or wrong, the buck stops with the Minister. – Yours, etc,

KP SMYTH,

Glasnevin,