Mr. John Sheahan:

I, too, come from a rural area. The question of whether the cap of €225,000 will work is up for debate. As the Deputy has said, Longford has not seen much private development. Nor has rural Limerick, where I come from. In my area it is not an issue of affordability, as such. We are lucky enough in that there is a lot of employment down my way. I am told that the biggest problem at the moment is that the market in rural areas does not give developers an edge when evaluating sites on which to build. The other big issue, on which we have not touched today, is the shortage of skills and labour needed to build all these houses, even if we could get going tomorrow morning. I am not sure if that answers the Deputy's question. We do not seem to have a problem with that cap in my rural area.