Ms Patricia Byron:

Thank you, Chairman, for the invitation to attend the committee. I am the director general of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland. I wish to introduce, on my right, Mr. Micheál Mahon, who is in private practice but is chairman of the society's quantity surveying professional group. On my left is Mr. Michael Cleary. He is also in private practice and is a member of the planning and development professional group within the society. I would like to give a brief introduction and then I will hand over to Micheál and Michael to talk about the technical side of this homelessness and housing debate.

The society is a professional body. We look after the charter for chartered surveyors in Ireland but committee members will also see a logo on the slides reading RICS. We are a part of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors worldwide, with membership of approximately 100,000, all the way to the far side of the world and back. We see ourselves as being at the cutting edge of the property sector in the widest sense. The society encompasses a wide variety of disciplines, namely, quantity surveying, building surveying, mineral surveying and geomatic surveying. We look after anything from the land up. Also included are facilities management, the rental side and the property side. One will find auctioneers, valuers and technical surveyors are all part of this group.

The society is represented by public and private sector members. One will find our members in the Valuations Office, Ordnance Survey Ireland, the Office of Public Works, large construction environments, right down to offices and shopfronts in our local towns and villages where one will see differentiating factors when one sees our logo, Chartered Surveyors Ireland and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. It is a mark of excellence. It is also a mark of regulation and a mark of people who have spent four years doing a base degree plus three years for a professional qualification.

I also mention that of our 5,000 members in Ireland, half - 2,500 - are rural. I am sure most members will have come across them in one shape or other. There is a very rich vein of knowledge and qualification among our members. We have been given powers under the Building Control Act to register building and quantity surveyors in the country so we look after that.

We regulate them. We are the regulator in that regard, and we make sure they work to the highest standards.

In respect of the presentation, we believe it is a time for political bravery and we will set out a number of key points which we have also put in a number of publications in recent years. We warned about the lack of supply four or five years ago. We warned about the lack of building regulations, and we see where that has led us in that we are retrofitting and bringing housing back into a safe condition. We differentiated between quality of building standards and design, which is mixed up in many people's minds, and we believe it is time that the voice of the professionals in this space is heard. I will pass over to Mr. Mahon.