Ms Áine Myler:

If I can address that point, if one focuses on housing, the private sector could do that. However, apartments are, frankly, a whole different ball of wax. There are no two ways about it.

We have talked a lot about housing units today but frankly, according to CSO statistics, we already have as much housing as we need in this country, from a family unit perspective. I know that is probably difficult to hear but based on household size and other CSO data, we already have too many houses in the country. In fact, we already have too many houses in Dublin, which is staggering, given the critical shortages people are facing at this point in time. We really need to focus on the delivery of apartments now.

The question was asked as to why it costs so much more and it is because we are not very experienced at such building. Apartments have been a very small part of our market to date. Apartments are viewed as being for short-term leasing rather than long-term housing. I am originally from Ballymun and the apartment scheme there was supposed to lead out on what apartment living would be like. They were really good units but were poorly managed over time and we all know what happened to that particular scheme in the end. That is a mistake that we would not want to repeat it but by the same token, in the context of our cities and economy, we need to be building apartments. At this point in time, based on current building regulations, size and location, the private market could not deliver public apartments or apartments affordable to those on average incomes, which is borne out by the report we produced last year. This is of massive concern to us.