Sir, - The proposal from the Minister for the Environment that future housing developments must include a 20 per cent content of "affordable" housing raises an interesting point, namely that by implication the other 80 per cent is unaffordable or non-affordable.
I await with baited breath, nay, with trepidation, the property pages of The Irish Times, when the doughty warriors of the IAVI start to grapple with marketing the unaffordable! They're not bad, as it is, with the flights of fantasy and gross hyperbole, but just wait till their backs are to the wall(s)!
I hope that, if we do find ourselves with these custom-built slums, they should become known as "Dempseys". Idiocy on such a scale deserves to be commemorated.
The problem is a financial one and juggling with the size, quality or locations of future housing will not solve it. - Yours, etc.,
John Newman, Dublin 11.