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

So this is what was happening in the Department of Finance and what was happening out on the street was as follows, if I can bring this one up here, which is residential house prices were escalating at a very, very rapid rate, if you'll see the chart coming up in front of you there, and particularly so since the reversal of what might be called the Bacon measures. And we see house prices taking off in or around 2001 and they continue indefinitely until ... well, what was probably considered indefinitely, until 2006 and 2007 and they start crashing after which.

We also see that ... if I can bring up the next one there, which is the relationship of ... yes, here it is. We see the relationship of the cost of a house to somebody actually working and these figures relate to the average industrial wage and the relevance of house prices in respect of that and, once again, we see a sort of a flat line area there which is around the time of the Bacon report which shows that there's a kind of ... there is a flat line position and people's earnings are somewhat maintaining a relationship with the price of houses. But, all in all, what we see between 1996 and then, with the removal of Bacon and its recommendations, and moving to 2006, we see, in the ... in the new house arena income ratios to house affordability moving from 4.5 to just under ten times, and we see it in the second-hand market moving from just over 4% to almost 12 times ratios in the ... in the second-hand market.

Coming back to Deputy Doherty's question to you earlier this morning, what was being done to try and contain this very, very escalating house price inflation and the relationship it was having upon people out there in the street to be able to ... and families to be able to buy their own home, and in the context of what Ms Mackle, in her reports, was actually saying. It seemed to be - in all sorts of spheres - that there was a lot of red lights going off, that there was something of concern in the construction sector, particularly in residential stuff.