Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegates and thank them for their engagement with the committee. I wish to raise an issue that has been of concern to me for some time. Defining €300,000 as the price tag for a starter home seems expensive. Although we have had a recovery in recent years, I do not particularly see a huge wage recovery at present. For a lot of people, €300,000 is a high threshold to reach at this time. Mr. McDonagh gave us the very interesting information that the cost of the site in the example he gave was some €30,000, with the cost for NAMA's portfolio being similar. I am taking it, therefore, that the average cost is around €30,000, with perhaps €50,000 being the maximum.

When the delegates talk about units, I assume that involves everything from apartments to three-bedroom semi-detached houses. During the housing crisis, I approached the owner of a medium-sized construction company to ask about building costs. For an A-rated 1,000 sq. ft. house, he gave me a quotation of €110,000, which included €95,000 for the house and €15,000 for the associated works. I later spoke to a local quantity surveyor at a business meeting and he gave an estimated building cost of €1,000 per square foot, which was not far off the figure given by the builder. I am talking here about A-rated homes being constructed by a creditable and modestly sized building company. Using those figures would land the cost of a site in the €140,000 to €190,000 range. Even if we say we go to the lower end and assume a €250,000 sale price and with the caveat that I am referring to Cork rather than Dublin, there is a €100,000 gap, which is staggering, between the figures I gave and those offered by Mr. McDonagh. Is NAMA tendering out work to smaller builders? I have given the quotation I mentioned to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Minister for Finance and have discussed the issue with the delegates in the past. These people are there to be interrogated as to construction costs. The discrepancy in the figures is a cause for concern.

In the course of our discussion today, NAMA was likened to a housing agency. I would say it is much more like a bank. It is funding the development of Boland's Quay, for instance, and there is a lot of expertise there. I do not have a huge issue with that. Certainly, we need as many strands of funding as can possibly be made available in order to stimulate the industry.

While we have primarily discussed the situation in Dublin, will the delegates broaden their comments to encompass Cork and the regions?