lecture on modern Irish history.

1. The Irish State in
the 20th Century
Confronting Myths
Dr. Conor McCabe
UCD School of Social Justice
Mater Dei Institute
3 April 2014

4. In the end the soviet was basically an
emotional and spontaneous protest on
essentially nationalist and
humanitarian grounds, rather than
anything based on socialist or even
trade union aims.”
Cahill, Forgotten Revolution, p.148.

5. - On August 26th 1921, the bakery and mills in Bruree County Limerick were
occupied by its employees. All staff bar the manager and chief clerk joined the
occupation. They hoisted a red flag and declared the “Bruree Soviet Workers Mill”
was the property of workers and would sell its food cheap and reduce
“profiteering”. Union officials claimed the Soviet was able to drop prices, double
sales and increase wages

14. “We wish to resuscitate the
speculative builder..”
W.T. Cosgrave, 1925

15. “We wish to resuscitate the
speculative builder..”
W.T. Cosgrave, 1925
Housing Acts, 1924 & 1925
- Building grants for owner-occupiers
- Remission on local authority rates

16. “The modest level of housing activity which these acts stimulated
was limited to Dublin and Cork – big local authorities who could
raise money through bond issues on the stock exchange…
Because the Local Loans Fund, the mechanism used to finance
local authority infrastructure projects, did not extend to housing
schemes, smaller local authorities who wanted to proceed with
schemes had to borrow funds from commercial banks who were
very reluctant to lend money for such ‘unproductive’ purposes.”
[My emphasis]
Cathal O’Connell, The State and Housing in Ireland: Ideology, Policy and Practice (New York, 2007), p.25

19. “I am a firm believer in private
ownership, because it makes for
better citizens, and there is no
greater barrier against communism.”
Senator James Tunney, Labour Party, 1952

20. “The man of property is ever against
revolutionary change. Consequently a factor
of the first importance in combating
emigration and preventing social unrest,
unemployment marches, and so on, is the
widest possible diffusion of ownership.”
Most Revd Dr. Cornelius Lucey, Bishop of Cork, 1957

27. 1966 Housing Act
- allowed local authority tenants in urban
areas to purchase their homes
- by the early 1990s, 220,000 of the
330,000 public housing units in the state had
been sold to tenants

28. From a housing market to a mortgage market
“One of the old ghosts in the residential market was laid to rest this week by Mr.
Edmund Farrell, chairman of the Irish Permanent Building Society, when he
revealed that the purchase of a new home is not necessarily the biggest single
lifetime investment – simply because the average building society mortgage has
itself a lifetime of only about ten years.
The significance of this information is considerable, and it does much to explain the
frenzy of activity both in the residential market and in the £150 million Irish building
societies’ movement. If the average mortgage is ‘turned over’ once in a decade, the
average man can buy not one, but two or three different homes in his working life.”
Irish Times, 10 February 1973.

29. 1974 Kenny Report
1975 – Commercial banks enter the mortgage market on a wide scale
1984 Surrender Grant Scheme
1988 – Section 23 Tax Relief reintroduced
1988 – Local autorities bow out of residential mortgage provision
1991/92 – high-point of owner-occupancy in Ireland – 79 per cent.
1999 – Rural Renewal Scheme – Shannon area

50. “Part of the reason people get less giddy
about the Dow than they did five years ago
is that they have learnt a bit about
inequality.
what looks like a recovery, a rally or an
increase in consumer confidence may just be
the effect of elites passing money among
themselves.“
Christopher Caldwell, FT 9 March 2013