Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Public Accounts Committee

National Asset Management Agency: Financial Statements 2016 and 2017
Comptroller and Auditor General Special Report No. 102: National Asset Management Agency Second Progress Report

9:00 am

Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

We still have borrowers but there is still an income cap under the Central Bank rules. The issue here really boils down to the fact that that does not solve the housing crisis. It can only be solved, in my view, by having more stock available in the market. We funded the building, as Mr. Daly said, directly and indirectly of about 10,500 units in the last four years. There are, however, plenty of other people in the market who have land banks. They are beginning to build houses now but the issue is that we need more housing stock. The whole system is choked up. If we do not have enough housing stock, there will be people renting who would like to buy. There is also the issue - another Deputy expressed a view on this earlier - that there should be more social housing stock available. If there was more social housing stock, then those people would not be trying to rent against other people in the system. This is a fundamental problem and my point is that it can only be solved by increased supply. We are doing our best to deliver as much housing as we can but we have a limited mandate, our timeframe will probably finish at the end of 2020 and the market is the market. I ask the Deputy to believe me when I say that we have sites, even in her own constituency, that we would like to develop but for different reasons we cannot get on and develop them. Those are sites that have good infrastructure. There are all sorts of complications around this. It is not straightforward.

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