Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, what I was saying is in relation to the Bacon stuff, that was about how do you increase supply, that was the main theme there. Because Bacon was asked to come in and help at the end of 1999, on the basis that you needed to increase supply quite quickly ... the capacity wasn't there to do it, and a lot of ... there's a new Planning and Development Act and a lot of special development zones were introduced, a lot of things brought in, serviced land initiatives, all of that. But all of those Bacon-type recommendations were based on how do you facilitate supply quickly. There was also Part V issues, which is about how do you get social and community gain into the system, and that was ... that had some success as well. But, I mean, to come to the point that ... the basic ... you know, it was hard ... in a market situation, I wasn't promoting high prices. I wasn't saying "Let's give ... let's get prices higher". I was saying to the industry, and indeed as the Minister for the Environment would be saying because he was in charge of housing policy - I was in charge of the fiscal side of the thing - but in housing policy you're saying "Can we get ... where the demand is needed, can we get houses built?" And we're seeing, even today, you know, I'm not saying it's the same thing but the question of trying to get demand met in places where it's needed is the ... is the crucial issue, and having capacity to do that. We had capacity then.

There were, clearly, at local authority level, development plans adopted which provided for house construction in areas where demand hadn't been ... hadn't been obviously assessed properly, and in other areas there were local authorities were there was clearly demand for housing where people were refusing to adopt development plans that would facilitate it. So, therefore, you had a dislocation, but that's not ... you know, I don't ... the other point is on the regulatory side, I agree, you know, looking back now, there was certainly reason for the regulator to ... to intervene rather than simply adopt statements saying we'd be better ... you know, "Watch yourself getting a 100% mortgage" and all this stuff. We needed a more interventionist approach and we didn't get it. Now, that's where that ended up, and obviously it ... it contributed to some of the problem as well. So I ... I ... I mean these are the ... these are what we know now. I ... I just felt supply ... increased supply is the best way of dealing with moderating house prices.