Mr. Seán O'Neill:

I agree with what Deputy Darragh O'Brien said. We represent all the house builders in Ireland. Many of the small and medium-sized builders in Dublin and further afield have had their balance sheets broken. As we said in our opening statement, they have effectively gone through ten years of nothing happening. When it comes to procurement, whether from an LDA or local authority perspective, these guys need flexibility. They cannot be looked on as basket cases. One has to take into account the journey they have been on. It is something that has been almost ignored in the discussion.

On the affordability issue, there is a lack of understanding of the true cost of developing apartments and houses. I did a quick analysis yesterday. We are in the process of tendering so this is live data. The cost of building an 800 sq. ft two-bedroom apartment is exactly the same as a 1,600 sq. ft four-bedroom house. We are not a basket-case country. In the US and Canada, and on the Continent, everyone is suffering from increased costs due to regulation. No one wants to say regulation is not a good thing; we all want to embrace regulation and build to the best standards. However, first-time buyers are like people buying their first car; they want to buy a Volkswagen Golf and not a Tesla. Whereas with the housing market, we are trying to deliver a Tesla to the first-time buyer. That is creating a major affordability gap and it needs to be addressed.

There have been suggestions about how the LDA can help that by having the land come in at a lower value than what the private market is paying for it. That is part of the solution. Having said that, committee members have made reference to the land market and I believe the land market has softened. Many sites are not moving in the market. Approximately three years ago, land was moving very fast and at very high prices. Most members of the IHPA stayed out of the land market because they just could not afford to compete in it. I can see that in our own valuations with banks. Land values are beginning to soften.

A big part of the land value softening is related to the increase in construction costs. We are seeing increasing construction costs. We are tendering to small and medium-sized contractors as well as very large contractors, and we are seeing increasing costs. Much of it relates to the lack of resources in the industry. We are competing with other countries for materials. We are competing with all the big countries in Europe for insulation products, steel etc. We need to pay the same price or even more to get it into our supply chain. People regard affordability as being a house at €300,000. It is very hard to produce it at that level even with a very low land value.