Mr. Seamus Coffey:

From the point of view of public expenditure on housing, if there is to be a significant increase in public expenditure, given the commitments in respect of spending in other areas, it should be funded through additional revenue raising measures or reallocations in spending. This would be feasible. Taking the broader economy as a whole, can we dramatically increase housing output in an economy where the unemployment rate is 5.5%? A key question for us is where are the workers going to come from to build those houses if output is to rise at a much more rapid rate? For example, are workers from other sectors, including workers previously in construction who moved during the recovery to other sectors, to be drawn back into construction with promises of more attractive wages, leading to an increase in wage pressures across the economy, or are we going to bring in workers from abroad, which is what we did during the previous construction boom? If we are to bring workers in from abroad we will have to be able to house them. We would be bringing them in to build houses for themselves before they can build houses for us. This is just one area where difficulties can arise.

From a public finance perspective, if there are to be additional allocations to housing, they will need to be funded from sustainable resources of revenue.