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

Can I talk about one of the other factors that's at play actually during that time and I bring up the next graph? This is the ratio of average new house price to average industrial wage. If you look at both graphs one is new house price and the other is average second hand house price. What we see here is that the ratio is in and around '96 or '97, is about four times the income of a household in terms of wages in both the new house and the second house market, and in the period I am talking about again, we see that becoming stabilised. If somebody was trying to buy a home for themselves between 2000 and 2002 - in and around that period - there is a stabilisation in the market. Following the removal of those Bacon measures, we then see the graph going up quite significantly, up to 12 times or ten times, respectively, of a person's capacity to earn. Have you any view on that?