Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Parlon and his colleagues. What intrigues me most is the €300,000 starter house and the ability of the average loan applicant to service a loan. As the Chairman knows, we are supposed to be well paid. I would not be able to service that type of loan for a starter house, and I am sure I am not the exception. In Mr. Parlon's calculations, what regard was had for the various costs? Incidentally, I accept that the VAT and taxes are a third of the total cost of a house. It has crept up gradually to such an extent that it is virtually impossible.

There are two items which I considered to be the biggest contributors to inflation in house prices. One was the speculation that took place in the land sector, where a person acquired a plot or plots of land or control over a multiplicity of plots of land and used that as a lever to enhance their own profits. There have been countless instances of this. I note what was said about capital acquisitions tax, capital gains tax and so forth. They should kick in to remove those problems, but apparently they do not. The problem facing us now is that over a seven or eight year period house prices increased by approximately 500%. That is intolerable. The availability of unlimited funds was a contributory factor. What about the speculation that took place where a person acquired a property or a multiplicity of properties and off-loaded them after six or eight months to somebody else at a massive profit, who in turn off-loaded them to somebody else, again at a massive profit?

Arising from that period, what amount of land likely to become available to the construction sector for the public and the private sector might be affected by the inflated prices that prevailed during the boom? In other words, are we using as a benchmark prices which are reduced somewhat but which have their roots in the boom period, so that some people who had speculated wrongly and unwisely might see themselves in a position to recover some ground? Our job is not to facilitate that but to facilitate the customer, whether that be the building sector or the consumer. That is the first option.