Ms Áine Myler:

Everything we talk about with regard to housing is complex and is influenced by other legislation. The Senator made her point about the household sizes with which we are dealing really well. These are diminishing all the time. About three years ago, to squeals of indignation, Dr. Ronan Lyons suggested that we should stop building three-bed and four-bedroom houses because, frankly, we have too many of them. We need apartments, duplexes and different densification models. The difficulty is getting people to buy into those types of units. Our underlying legislation, the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011, was a good start, but needs to be overhauled to encourage the concept of the common good that exists in more mature markets which feature apartment schemes. This means that one person cannot act in a way that is detrimental to everyone else's enjoyment of their homes. There is something to be done in that regard.