Sir, – As a millennial, I read and agreed with the sentiment of David McWilliams's article "Stay away from the Irish property market. It holds no value" (Analysis, March 27th). However, as we initiate a buyers' strike against a dysfunctional market, I wonder where we are meant to live? The alternative to buying housing is, of course, renting it. Rent paid goes directly towards further insulating the same "copper-bottomed boomers" who also control housing more generally.
It seems to me that what is really needed is some higher authority that exists to defend and vindicate the public against the interests of the market and increasingly small elites who control it. That authority could, for instance, regulate human necessities such as housing. They could even build it themselves and sell or rent it at cost price, allowing the public to maintain a stake in it. That way, it wouldn’t be up to individual buyers to choose between extortionate rent or an extortionate mortgage. Such an authority, as I describe it, could therefore revolutionise housing in this country and vindicate the millennial generation, as well as those following. If only this authority existed . . . oh wait. – Yours, etc,
ORLAITH M DARLING,
Naul,
Co Dublin.