Dr. Colin Hunt:

We have had a very volatile housing market going back over many decades, as the Deputy knows. In the crash in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the average house price fell by more than 50%. It is that credit and performance history that has had such a large impact in terms of the quality of underwriting, the macroprudential rules and ensuring that the loans we make to our customers are repayable and financeable in a changing economic environment. At the moment, there is a situation in which there has been a very significant recovery in housing output from the lows in 2010 and 2011; I think about 2,000 units were built in the aftermath of the crash. This year, there will probably be north of 30,000 units built. That is short of the supply available. Due to the very strong demand, there is an underpinning of house prices despite the increase in borrowing costs. My suspicion is that there will be a more stable house price environment than in the past number of years because of the two countervailing impacts working on the price and dynamic, one being the higher cost of finance and the other very strong demand outstripping supply, which, of course, is a problem.