Mr. Roland O'Connell:

I do but that is a much broader question. We have covered a lot of that in our submission. In broad terms, the two big issues that face us in the construction business and in the property business are confidence and finance. Those are the two big issues which stop activity in the marketplace. In our submission, we dealt with those under a number of different headings. For instance, on the residential mortgage side of things, we feel there is some confidence coming back into the market but it is very fragile and it is very localised. That is very important from a governmental point of view, in particular in the case of new apartments and houses which were built but never sold. There is a large amount of VAT tied up there and if any of those are sold, the VAT revenue comes back into the central Exchequer, so it is very important to see some activity there.

From speaking to people involved in residential sales, the big issue we found was that approximately 40% of all transactions in the greater Dublin area this year were cash buyers, including people who sold abroad and are moving back and so on. That is an indictment of the fact that despite the banks being recapitalised by the State, they are not lending. Do not get me wrong. We acknowledged, and did not like, the fact mortgages were too easy to get but it is now the other extreme. There are very viable mortgagees who should be getting loans but who cannot get them at the moment and, therefore, cannot buy a house and generate revenue for Exchequer.

We feel very strongly that despite what the banks are saying, they are not lending at the rate they should be. Having approved people for mortgages, they are then creating hurdles and difficulties when people go to draw down the finance. We have asked that it is looked at by the Department of Finance.