Dr. Tom McDonnell:

It is all about moderation, yes, so the State will always get a cut. If they are getting away with it by changing their behaviour in a way that is positive for human health, I am fine with that.

I do not have a particular macro solution on the issue of affordable housing. One of the things that will lead to more affordable housing in the long run is dealing with the mismatch between demand and supply. Simply building more houses will cause house prices to come down. They will come more into line with earnings for middle earners as that ratio improves, albeit I take the point about short-term contracts, which situation may improve as the labour market tightens. We still have not reached our potential with job vacancy rates remaining poor in Ireland compared with other countries. Workers will be able to negotiate better conditions as the market tightens and that will help. Those policies in terms of building houses and the labour market taking care of itself will both assist in what the member is talking about.

Introducing some fiscal instrument to support those households may or may not be a good idea. It would certainly be difficult to force banks to lend money to those households. Presumably, the banks' models are based on probability of capacity to pay over the next 25 to 30 years. Clearly, if they see a contract of six to 12 months, they would have an issue.

I do not necessarily have a solution to that problem other than to say that building houses will drop rental costs as well. Part of the issue is that rental costs are so much higher than mortgage costs. People want to buy houses, which is simply fuelling house prices, which will continue to increase over the next two years at least, unfortunately, and probably at a double digit rate. The solution is getting the public and private sectors to build houses - the Deputy spoke about welfare - in areas close to urban centres, such as Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway city centres. That should be the focus in terms of public policy. I am not sure if I addressed every question.