Visiting the country in the 1830s, an English Commentator, Henry Inglis, wrote about what he saw in Irish homes.
'Let the truth be imagined and it will not be beyond the truth. In at least three-fourths of the hovels which I entered there was no furniture of any description save an iron pot - no table, no chair, no bench, no bedstead; two, three or four little bundles of straw, with perhaps one or two scanty and ragged mats rolled up in the corners unless where these beds were found occupied'.
The development of public housing in growing cities like Kilkenny, Waterford Limerick and Galway led to the development of social housing for the labouring class. The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act 1899, provided people with the potential to take out loans with their local authority to purchase homes. This led to the development of services for the provision of these loans by banks and building societies.
References
Development of the Irish Housing System in Ireland | Ireland | VIEW SOURCE |