Mr. Gavin Lawlor:

In the institute, we do not have any specific ideas as to economic or other interventions. What we are saying is that we are listening to what people are saying to us. If the development community is saying that it is uneconomic to develop certain houses, that must be evidence based. They need to produce evidence of that to say what the impediments are. Is it land costs, materials, labour, the planning system, delays or provision? Where are the cost points that are causing the economic viability or otherwise? Is it standards? One of the things we keep forgetting, and I do not see this as a negative but as a positive, is that we have massively improved the quality of housing that is being delivered to people now, whether it is social or otherwise. Things like daylight standards and the amount of energy needed to heat the home are all significant improvements but they all cost money to deliver and that is part of the reason house prices are going up, because we are spending more on the houses we are building. It is not a bad thing but there is an implication from it. I am not advocating that we go back to the good old days but the point is that there is a cost implication. Let us look at that. Let us take an evidence-based approach and ask what is the real true cost of building a house, what is the land value piece and what is the taxation piece in real terms. We should be honest with ourselves and ask where we can make positive interventions to encourage people to develop houses where we want them. If you say to people - I am not advocating for this, just in case the committee thinks I am - that we are not going to charge VAT if they develop, as suggested, within half a kilometre of a city centre, that is going to encourage certain people to develop in certain areas but it might have an unintended consequence. We need to think seriously about what the impediments are and what encouragement we want to do to try to positively direct development if that is what we are going to do. It is another way of active land management through incentives. The incentives might be investment in public transport in advance, investment in infrastructure in advance or investment in community facilities in advance.

That would make an area really desirable to live in and that then encourages developers to try to develop there because they know they are going to sell their units quickly.