Dr. Robert Kelly:

Basically, what the Deputy is saying is you trade off future current expenditure by doing the capital expenditure now. Rationally, from an economics point of view, that makes a lot of sense. However, it still meets this point of the capacity constraints of the economy.

If we do not have construction workers, it is very hard to deliver X thousand more houses and, if we try to do it, we run the risk of pushing up the cost of supplying those houses and not actually getting good value for the State's capital spend. That is potentially the issue here. It is about finding that balance. From an economic standpoint, if we had a clear map, we would say that, of course, investing in the provision of more social housing would mean that current expenditure could be lowered in the future but it is about getting the balance correct right now to ensure that we do not get bad value for money with regard to that capital spending.