Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I see the summaries which Mr. O'Kelly referenced in terms of ISIF's lending. I do not think the housing market will really recover until such time as we have affordable housing for which, say, the likes of some of the NTMA's junior employees might be in a position to get a mortgager, even in the Dublin area where the price is somewhere from €350,000 to €550,000. I just don't see that happening in any serious volume at the moment.

What the Irish market lacks is volume. We have a lot of housing projects. While that is all very good, the volume in terms of numbers relative to demand needs to be improved. There is pent-up demand from the ten years since the economy crashed. Some of the people who got their jobs ten years ago and are now in their early to mid-30s, maybe even older and, even though they might be public servants with lifetime jobs or people in stable, strong sectors, they cannot find houses to buy. I think everybody here would know people desperately scrambling to get mortgage approval.

Is there anything that Mr. O'Kelly believes would generate volume in the Irish market? I am thinking in particular of levels of affordability, which obviously vary in different parts of the country. I am also thinking of what people like the social housing authorities, say, are doing. They are talking now about affordable rent, as well as traditional life-long social housing tenancies. The volume is not there. A further issue is the fact that the housing associations are minutely small, given the numbers required.

If one looks at housing associations as they developed in the UK, their numbers are much greater. Does the NTMA follow the housing market? I know the NTMA has a lot of analysts working with it. It would be very interesting to hear whether it has identified any mechanisms because it is a real problem at the moment.