Mr. Conor O'Connell:

To deal with the first issue, most of our members are intergenerational family firms building at different scales throughout Ireland. There are different markets, different scales and different towns and cities. Obviously, Dublin is a very large market but even in the Dublin region the vast majority of house builders are intergenerational family firms that purchased land in the last number of years to bring it through the planning process to build homes. If this measure were to be introduced retrospectively and in a cliff-edge manner, I have no doubt it would put many of those firms out of business. We would lose the skills, knowledge and generations of expertise in building houses.