Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Deputy Canney asked a question about new owners hoarding land and what can be done to make them build. There are lots of reasons why people hoard land. There is an element of people sitting back and saying that prices will go up so they will make more profit. This does not necessarily mean that those people will build the houses; it just means that if the prices of the houses go up, the price of the land will be a multiple of that.

They might decide to sell on the land again in the future but they will wait for house prices to go up first. There are already mechanisms in place in this regard. Effectively, the legislation already makes provision for a vacant site levy, and there is talk of introducing that towards the end of this decade. Again, I am very reluctant to propose disincentives to build. Nonetheless, calibration is a great thing in that it outlines what will happen if people do not do something with the land. I believe that is very useful.

All of our cash is at present earmarked for building or for paying back our debt. We cannot use our cash to fund this infrastructure deficit. If it was a NAMA debtor's land, the way we would use our cash is to lend the debtor more money, which he would use to pay the local authority to contribute towards that infrastructure. However, we do that on the basis that we can get our money back, and it would have to be a commercial arrangement.

Deputy Canney's final question concerned the profit of €20,000 per unit. That is an average. The reality is that people will always be able to produce schemes where they say they will only make €10,000 per unit on a certain type of a house in a certain development. There are typically three, four and five bedroom houses within a scheme, and a person could make an average of €12,000 to €14,000 on a smaller house, €22,000 to €25,000 on a four bedroom house and up to €40,000 on a five bedroom house, of which there would be very few. It is the average profit that is close to €20,000.

What it comes down to, at the end of the day, is the cost of the land. If somebody has overpaid for the land in the first place, there will be a bigger site cost and that will reduce the profit. The Central Bank measure, by reducing the size of mortgages that people can take out, has certainly had a stabilising effect on the price of land because it is completely linked to the price of houses and, if people cannot get mortgages, they cannot buy the houses. Again, I have my own views about the calibration of that, but, as a measure, it is a useful tool. I hope that answers the Deputy's questions.