Madam, - The winners in the current property speculation mania are the banks, government, and those who are already rich. Beyond lower-income and marginalised people, the losers are young people and even more so, the young generations to come.
Young people today are faced either with the despair of not being able to achieve home ownership or having to live most of their lives with millstone mortgages around their necks.
And what is this speculation based on? New developments in pre-fab and other building technologies are continually reducing the costs of building.
So we can deduce that it is the value of the land which is rising exponentially.
It seems to me that any human being put on this earth has an indefeasible right to a piece of land.
And I am not sure whether it is morally right to speculate on land and shelter.
Surely the land was intended for all God's creatures?
And is not the right to shelter a basic human right?
Two pieces of legislation are urgently needed.
The first is rent control, and the second is limiting the mortgages banks are able to offer to 20 years and twice the annual income of the applicant(s).
This is a simple and much-needed solution that would let us live lives beyond our current sordid obsession with "property". - Yours, etc,
RONAN ROCHFORD, Sullivan St, Dublin 7.