Mr. Seamus Coffey:

One would look at household formation, demographics, inward migration, household size and a range of other factors. It is not an analysis we undertake. By and large, we look at what other people are saying. They say that housing output in Ireland should be somewhere in the region of 30,000 to 50,000 units per year. It is not there and, based on last year, the figure may be closer to 10,000 units. The figure is way below the requirement. The Department's forecast expects the number to rise by 3,000 units per annum, which is a slow, steady and stable increase. Our view is that when housing output picks up, as we all hope it does, it would pick up much more rapidly than that and the impact on the economy could be a cyclical surge in employment and tax revenue. We should view that as being temporary, as house building is quite tax-rich. It could be a case that people come in to build houses and once they are built, they move on again. We could be left with a legacy problem similar to what we had before. We are accepting that housing output must increase but we would like to see it increasing in a stable and sustainable fashion.