Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish to explore the issue of affordability of homes with Dr. Bacon. My interpretation, which Dr. Bacon can correct if I am wrong, is that he saw affordability more for the ability to pay a mortgage. One of Dr. Bacon's recommendations was to increase the length of mortgage time. I think he may have put out a figure of 35 years on one occasion.

I am keen to explore with Dr. Bacon a different take, as it were, on affordability and ask for his opinion. Dr. Conor McCabe, from the UCD school of social justice, in an article, Irish Housing and Wages, 1977 to 2006: Portrait of a Scam, published on 8 June 2010 stated:

Best practise has house prices at 2.5 to 4 times the average industrial wage...apart from the recession years of the mid-1980s, housing in Ireland has been overpriced for the past 33 years...The figures belie the current myth of the ‘Good’ Celtic Tiger which ran up to around 2002, and the ‘Bad’ Celtic tiger which ran from 2002 to 2007...In 1997, house prices once again breached 5.0, and just kept on climbing...By the time the ‘Good’ Tiger ended in 2002, the affordability ratio stood at 8.17.

Why did Dr. Bacon not measure affordability in regard to the absolute cost of a house, rather than projecting a period of 35 or 40 years for repayment?