Mr. Conor Skehan:

I will come back to that point soon. Point taken. We do not disagree with that. The next issue relates to data and skin in the game. One of the most certain ways to bring about a housing crisis is to have an oversupply of unwanted dwellings. I should not have to go into any more detail in this particular chamber as to how that has affected Ireland. In 2008 we built 98,000 units in Ireland. As a result of the oversupply the market for housing dried up. People who had borrowed money to buy and build those houses lost their money to such a degree that this country experienced one of the most catastrophic falls ever experienced by a western European democracy. The primary cause is inaccurate data that are not delivered on time. The mechanism for bringing about the collapse of a housing market is people continuing to invest in a market long after the demand has dried up. The agency has specifically been mandated by the Government to produce an annual housing needs assessment. We do it every year because of the complexity of housing and those changing numbers. Our current estimate is between 20,000 and 25,000 per annum. Poor old Cathal Mac Coille - that is not said badly - but the Davys and those types of people and I argued long and hard about the lack of wisdom of people making excessive projections as to what the housing supply should be. I will not name any of the people the Deputy mentioned a few minutes ago who produced projections but they are all the same people who told us we were going to have a soft landing.