Mr. Patrick Davitt:

As Mr. Allen said, putting pressure on county councils to buy different properties is something that could be done at the moment. As better properties become available, the council can obviously get out of those properties, sell them and move on to better properties because the housing need the Senator is talking about is there at the moment. If councils get into the market and buy these properties right now, there is nothing stopping them from selling them in four or five years time and getting into better properties as they are built. It is the ideal solution.
Longford and Edgeworthstown have rail lines so they are towns with trains which many country towns do not have. I know this because I am from around there myself. I live in Mullingar so I know the area quite well. We are all trying to get trains to go here, there and everywhere. We all believe the train is the way to travel. I travel by train myself and find it is very good. Property prices in some areas on the south side of Dublin have probably gone up by as much as 40% in the past two years. We see people like Ronan Lyons talking about this on the basis of what they see on websites. Auctioneers can tell one what is actually happening in the marketplace. What is happening in the marketplace is far higher than what Mr. Lyons, daft.ieand myhome.ieare talking about. In Edgeworthstown alone, one could have bought a three-bedroomed semi-detached house for €40,000 in January 2014. One could have bought one in bad condition that was possibly rented for quite a while for €25,000. Today, that house that was worth €25,000 would cost someone €50,000 and the house priced at €40,000 would probably cost one €60,000. In Edgeworthstown, which is one of the Siberias spoken about by the Senator, if one looks at the value of these houses, the price of property has gone up by 100%. I know 100% on a very small amount of money does not seem an awful lot but 100% in Dublin when one is looking at the price of properties that go up by 20% or 30% seems an awful lot. That is all we look at because it is in the capital but one looks throughout the country, one will see property prices in different places that have gone up considerably because they went down an awful lot. Why do county councils and people who are in the market-----