Mr. Dominic Doheny:

Finance is extremely challenging and has become even more challenging. It all depends on where the question is directed but with regard to housing, development finance is extremely difficult to get. The pillar banks are tapering off on this activity at the moment and our members are very much turning towards the mezzanine funders again. These funders are at somewhere between 8% and 14%, depending on the location as it is very demographic-sensitive. One then obviously has to factor that percentage into the end product, which makes some end products unviable. That is a major challenge.

Those who are buying the houses, meanwhile, need mortgages. At a national meeting recently we put the following question to our members. If we had 10,000 extra houses in the system at the moment, would they sell them? The answer was "No" because even if buyers qualify for the potential rules, the availability of mortgages is not there. Most banks are capping out mid-year or towards August, with the applications for the balance of the year then pushed into the following year. This is a major issue at the moment.

The second question concerned the vacant site levy. We as an industry absolutely support the Government's initiative on this. We do not support land-hoarding. One must analyse the matter in great depth, however. There are parts of the country where people might qualify for the levy but where viability is a major issue. If they cannot prove to their banks that their lands are viable then they will never develop them, but the lands will grow more expensive as the levy is applied every year. Some county councils are more active than others in this regard, but we would put a major question mark over viability. The farmers got an exit from this recently, but we have members who have land which is not viable, where they cannot build, for which they cannot get finance, but upon which the levy is being applied. We would put a major question mark on that.