Employment and Housing

Economic conditions in Ireland in the interwar years meant that many, particularly the working class, suffered from unemployment and poor housing. In 1926, there were 800,000 living in overcrowded conditions. The question is whether the conditions of the ex-servicemen reflected those of the general population or whether they were worsened by discrimination. Employment and housing problems were raised in the 1927 Dáil Éireann debate on the claims of British ex-servicemen. Redmond said that Colonel Crosfield, the Chairman of the British Legion, who had just toured Ireland and met both Legion members and ex-servicemen unconnected to it, ‘gave a fearful description of the condition of many of the ex-servicemen’. Redmond added, ‘it has reached such a stage that Field Marshal Earl Haig has made an appeal in Great Britain for the destitute and suffering ex-servicemen in this country’. Shaw illustrated the conditions of ex-servicemen with reference to an ex-Irish Guard who had a 12s per week disability allowance, was unable to obtain work and lived with his wife and five children in a house with practically no roof.

Commenting in 1927 on the need to examine ex-servicemen's complaints, the Irish Times wrote that 50,000 ex-soldiers were unemployed, of whom nearly 30,000 were in the City of Dublin, and that ‘thousands of ex-servicemen in the Free State are in dire distress’, and are helped by the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, the British Legion, the United Services Fund, and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society, ‘but thousands are dependent on poor law relief’. The previous week the Morning Post had written, ‘There are in all about 186,000 British ex-servicemen in Southern Ireland, and of these approximately one third are unemployed and without any hope of getting employment’. In 1928, Crosfield claimed that there were 800 unemployed ex-servicemen in Wexford alone, who existed mainly on a parish relief of 6s per week per family. The Times reported in 1931 that ex-servicemen were finding it difficult to get employment or houses. The Legion estimated that in 1933/34 an estimated 20,000 ex-servicemen were in need of work.