In our modern world, with all sorts of amazing technologies changing whole industries, it seems less than productive to polarise problems such as the housing crisis as "the state" on one side, versus "the private sector" on the other, as this runs the risk of ruling out ideas just because they don't strictly adhere to a particular ideology.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many infrastructural and development plans - and investments - are made on the basis of where population levels are at currently, rather than looking at the potential of the area and the underlying, simmering demand for what that area might be able to contribute, if given a small shove along. I'm talking primarily here about the Western half of Ireland, of course. Such...