Ms Orla Hegarty:

The nature of the speculative development sector is that all the money will rush to the most attractive option. At the time that the deregulation happened around 2016-2017, I warned that if Government made something more attractive, all of the money would chase that and it will out-compete everything else. Effectively, co-living and build-to-rent apartments had standards reduced.

They were made far more attractive than build to sell and they set the market. The land value is then determined on the basis of how much rent can be recouped from the number of build-to-rent units that can be fitted on a site. The height caps were removed, which inflated land value further. It has meant that model has outcompeted build-to-sell apartments. The Department started out with a target sales price of under €260,000 for a two-bedroom apartment in Dublin and produced figures to show that was doable in 2016. Although the intention was to sell two-bedroom apartments in Dublin at between €200,000 and €260,000, the rounds of changes and deregulation have encouraged what we have now, which are these very dense strategic housing developments, SHDs, that are predominantly build to rent. The rental income from those units over the long term, which is very high, has determined the land value and has basically killed the market for build to sell. It is a very difficult situation at present. Since so many of these permissions are on these sites now, unless there are very high returns on sales and rental prices, they are not viable to build.