Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations. It is important to say that we organised this hearing, which is one of two we have planned, because almost everybody on the committee shares the concern that all of our guests have raised today. We are all out and about and are talking to SME builders, buyers, materials suppliers and to our local authorities and in the past year in particular, they are all sounding the alarm about increasing construction sector costs. What we are trying to achieve today and in our next hearing is a full understanding of the problem to see what recommendations, if any, the committee can make to the Government to try to address this specific issue. There is always a danger when we have these conversations that we end up talking about everything. The difficulty is that if we talk about everything and have a long list of recommendations, we will not get to fix the core problem. I will try to stick specifically to construction sector inflation, not because I think the other issues that have been raised are unimportant but because that is what we are here to discuss today.

My first question is for all three groups. The more accurate information we have about where construction costs are going, the better able we are to try to design the best interventions. We hear lots of different figures but there is no comprehensive data available. In as much as they can estimate for the past 12 months, what are we looking at in terms of construction sector inflation? I ask Mr. Benson to answer on behalf of his members. I ask Mr. Taaffe to respond in terms of the local government sector and what the contractors are coming back with in regard to their difficulties. Mr. James said 13% to the end of last year. Most people were expecting things to level off in the first quarter of this year but now the expectation is the very opposite, with inflation continuing to go upwards. Where is that at?

The second question is whether there are any opportunities to reduce costs by focusing on construction sector materials or whether the only mitigation is on the soft costs or the timelines. All the solutions that people have proposed are more to do with the timelines and the soft costs than anything else. Are we just price takers when it comes to construction sector materials?

My third question is about priorities and I will limit our guests to one priority. Regarding the shopping lists on which they have come here to advise us, what is the most important element? What does the priority need to be? The witnesses have all made clear their concern about meeting targets. In terms of meeting those targets, we are not even really talking about affordability at this point but about viability. I ask our guests to give us their best stab at the single most important intervention they think the Government could make, with each of their sectors in mind, that is, the builders, the local authority sector and the surveyors.