Ms Orla Hegarty:

To my mind, the bottom line is if housing must be delivered at scale, at what level can it be delivered so the majority of people can meet their own housing need without subsidy. That is how I would define affordable housing. Unfortunately, affordable housing, both in policy and the Land Development Agency, has been defined as a subsidy to bring prices up to a high market level. That is not scalable because the money will run out before need is met.

If we want to talk about what level the State could have housing delivered at, I agree that a price under €300,000 is doable for three-bedroom houses and two-bedroom apartments. In order to do that, it must be the objective, and it is not currently the objective. The current objective is to keep market prices high so investors are attracted to Ireland and subsidise the gap. We need a rethink in that regard. I have done a fair amount of analysis on costs over the years, particularly costs from local authority-----