Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for being here today. I have just come from the Committee on Public Accounts where we had a discussion with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage that centred on the issue of density, cost and the word "viability", which we continue to use. I am approaching this discussion having just come from that one. We are talking about land value sharing. Effectively the conclusion from the discussion next door was that even if we had land for nothing, houses cannot be built on it. We are talking about land value sharing and when there is a zero land cost, no profit can be gained. The apparent conclusion from the discussion next door was that, especially in cities where we need apartments because we need density, it will be impossible to build either public or private homes in cities without significant State subsidies. Is that correct?