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

On the building side of it, I want to move to the present, and then maybe work a bit backwards and we'll go back into NAMA and all the rest of it. In testimony recently with the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, last week, one of the issues that he repeated over and over was to increase supply, increase supply, during the crisis years. However, we know that even with the increase in supply between 2002 and 2007, affordability was an issue for a lot of people and that people on the average wage saw the average price of a house go up severalfold, in some cases ten to twelvefold over a period of time. In terms of a construction building programme at this moment in time, where are we with affordability? Is it possible, to your mind, that we can build houses that are somewhat in or around maybe four to five times the average industrial wage and provide people with an average house at that cost?