Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We will organise the proceedings into periods of 15 minutes or so. I welcome the delegates again. The reason we are meeting at this time of year, when we should be winding down for the summer, is because the budget is now in October. I very much appreciate the adjustment the delegates made to their schedules in submitting proposals at this time of the year. In the past, they might only have been considering the outline draft at this time.

Despite the massive economic crisis and the collapse of the massive housing bubble, and irrespective of trends in Germany and other countries where large numbers rent their homes, we may operate on the assumption that Ireland will continue to be a home-purchasing nation. All indicators demonstrate that. As we now move into a new space, I am struck by the difficulty that rents in the private sector are increasing quite quickly. Whether rents are chasing the market is a debate for another day, but we know for a fact that there is an increase. Perhaps there are two reasons, the first of which is that, with the legacy of the housing bubble, there has not been appropriate construction of purchasable houses for the past 18 months to two years.

A legacy of coming out of a housing bubble has been a lack of appropriate construction of purchasable houses for 18 months to two years. That tends to push people out who should be buying but are not. That group is stuck in there significantly. Mr. Davitt indicated his concern about the issue of loan-to-value difficulties as we see the property market begin to escalate in some areas again. Why did rent-to-buy not take off over the last couple of years?