Dr. Kieran McQuinn:

Yes. There are two elements to the housing issue. First, we need a continuous, certain provision for social housing. Our colleagues at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London have remarked on the similar situation in the UK, where the stock of public housing was effectively run down because of the privatisation of social housing in the late 1980s. We have a similar issue here; we need a continuous provision.

Second, it is clear that we need a substantial response from the private sector.

I think the site tax could go a long way towards addressing that issue.

In her opening comments, Dr. Lawless referenced a paper in which we assessed the role of taxation measures in helping to alleviate supply. We carried out a fairly detailed analysis and we were, broadly speaking, quite sceptical depending on the nature of the perceived logjams in the system. We would refer people to that in terms of a detailed description.

I know from the work we have done that corporation tax is a very difficult thing to estimate and forecast. Many taxation measures can be measured, estimated and forecasted reasonably accurately, but corporation tax is very difficult. We simply do not know what will happen from year to year. There are many unforeseen developments. An accountant somewhere can make a decision which can result in a major transfer of funds from one jurisdiction to another. It is very difficult to accurately forecast that. A lot of work is being done on that by the Department of Finance and elsewhere. It is something that is continually improving.