Dr. Conor O'Toole:

In general, and to provide a context for our submission, the ESRI is hoping to be able to provide an overview of our recent research and to try to draw on that research to be able to give some evidence to the committee on the overall targeting and analysis of the various schemes. On the type of work we have done historically, a number of our papers have looked at credit access for households and at the degree to which households are credit constrained. These would be households that are or are not able to make transactions based on the level of leverage. If a household is credit constrained, it is not able to make that transaction without having more leverage. The balance of our submission was to attempt to provide some understanding from our existing research on the various economic channels that may occur with the development of a scheme, in the context of the broader range of schemes available in the market. Where schemes are supply side in nature, they would not necessarily provide additional borrower purchasing power, which I believe is a key issue from our research. We are very clear that the supply-side constraints in Ireland are the most binding constraints and the most difficult to deal with because it takes a long time for any supply measures to come on line. Certainly, the development of any schemes that would facilitate additional supply would be very welcome from our side. This is just to give a little insight into that.