Sir, - I am grateful to you for your reference (June 16th) to my recent article in the Simon Community Newsletter on the issue of public housing.
You make a very valid point in your leader that enormous sums of money will be needed if we are to make proper provision for public housing and avoid the human misery and the social crisis that will arise from escalating homelessness.
In that context it is difficult to understand the determination of the Minister for Finance to provide for a budget surplus of close to £1 billion. That is the sort of figure which even spread over a number of years could provide for both the construction and acquisition of housing for people who cannot afford to provide housing for themselves. To provide housing for homeless people, for vulnerable people and for poor people seems to me a much more urgent priority than the reduction of an already proportionately declining national debt. - Yours, etc., Brendan Ryan,
Seanad Eireann, Baile Atha Cliath, 2.