Mr. Conor Skehan:

We are leaving the committee with a very simple thought that we have repeatedly mentioned. The big picture is managing all our housing, of which building is a part. I have said that five times now but we must stop ourselves from being sucked into the builders' agenda that the only solution to everything is building; it is not. It is managing our stock in a smarter way. That is the first point. Managing does not only mean providing houses but also controlling their price. We as a nation must set targets for ourselves as to what constitutes an affordable house which is a reasonable multiplier of the disposable income of households. We must bring about a situation where our development sector builds to price and not one where it has all of us scrabbling around trying to bring whatever money we have up to whatever prices it sets for us. We must drive that down. It needs a concerted effort across all the instruments of Government to bring that about. That is the challenge for the committee and for it to see what we can do working with it. We are its servants from now until the end of July to help it to do that. That is the big picture and it is to see if we can do that.