Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Hegarty. I will call a halt to the meeting now as it is 6 o'clock. The initial meeting was to do with inflationary costs in construction. I think we covered a huge amount of ground in that regard. It has thrown up more questions for us that we must set out in our work themes from September onwards. We will have to return to this issue of costs in construction. I do not know where we will be in three months in terms of inflationary costs and potential mortgage interest increases, which obviously create affordability issues for people.

The witnesses mentioned poverty-proofing and the poverty assessment. We tend not to look at transport costs. A person living in his or her home has destinations to go to, whether it is school, work or for recreation and might be car dependent. This comes back to compact growth and densification and how we will build the designs in which people want to live in compact growth without this excessive small apartment-type scenario. Let us get away from that. We talked about duplexes. That is an area in which I am also very interested to see how we can get that better mix of design in there.

I thank Ms Hegarty, Mr. Doyle and Ms Donaghy. That was fascinating and very interesting. We also invited the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to appear before the committee because, obviously, they are the lead Departments in the construction of affordable and social housing. We will probably have them in in September and then, after that session, we may have a fourth; I do not know. We would hope to compile a report, however, a copy of which we will certainly issue to the witnesses. I thank them for their contributions and help to the committee today in dealing with this issue.