Professor John FitzGerald:

Nobody has done it. It is important to have a debate on this issue now. We do not need an instrument now, but by the end of the decade we may need something. One could use property tax. The other instrument, which we continuously recommend, was that instead of increasing investment, the Government could have cut back its own investment. What we said was, "If you want to undertake this investment programme, you're going to have to tax the hell out of the building industry to make space, because you can't have any more building." There are a range of different instruments. Reading through the media reports on the 2005 medium term review, I think I was asked what instruments and I listed a range of possible instruments that would have had some effect.