Dr. Cathal FitzGerald:

Before outlining a couple of recommendations, it is fair to say that town developments are ideal locations for social and affordable housing with the institutions driving them. All of the case studies we looked at without exception had social and affordable housing at their core. That said, with housing development and supply, in particular, affordability has to be engineered in.

That brings me to the two recommendations from the council. The first one would be a cost rental scheme at scale - a national scheme beyond pilots - with modest supply-side subsidies in terms of the land or through finance. It would be a useful existing mechanism at scale.

The second recommendation would be policy innovation around new off-balance sheet financial instruments.

Patient capital and finance could come in in advance of development and we could use our ingenuity and innovation to work within balance sheet and fiscal rules.

One recommendation uses the mechanisms we already have in cost rental and the other is some policy innovation around patient finance off-balance sheet. They would be the two I would go for, otherwise there is no guarantee that the supply would be transport orientated or affordable.