Dr. Conor O'Toole:

Let me start with the ray of hope for housing, if I may. From 2015 until last year, we saw a sustained increase in housing output over time. It was coming from a low base, but it was a sustained increase. Last year was much weaker than we had anticipated and there was no momentum coming into the first quarter of this year. There were just under 6,000 completions in the first quarter. When we consider that with the various factors I talked about on the cost side and other factors that have an impact on housing production, we do not see any momentum to break past the 33,000 units in our forecast for this year. There will be a little more next year, but there is a lot of uncertainty around the commencement figure that went up so much last year and when or if those housing units will come on line. There is some uncertainty but I certainly feel the risks are on the down side. Thinking about the underlying population or structural requirements of the housing need for the economy, there are various publications. Dr. Egan was involved in one and there were others by the Housing Commission and the Central Bank. We are talking about north of 50,000 units per annum to stand still with our housing need and it does not look like we will get there this year or next year, on the current data.

On the minimum unit sizes, a few aspects are important. Can housing be rightsized for the population? Looking at the Irish housing stock in comparison with that of other countries, there is a deficit of smaller apartment urban dwellings in Ireland.

We have lots of family housing units but one of the deficits we have is small housing units, especially for single individuals and people waiting to downsize or rightsize their housing need.

There are pros and cons to every policy choice but I can see economic advantages to having the flexibility on producing more smaller units in particular developments. It is not suitable for many housing needs, but there are groups in the population for whom smaller units are important. There is an interesting parallel I might draw. There is an organisation in Finland that is involved in housing policy and specifically homelessness policy. It is called the Y-Foundation. It has about 20,000 apartments under management in Finland and works with the state to house persons with additional needs who are experiencing homelessness. It has a particular policy with about 7,000 units in it. The average size of those is about 38 m sq., so they are quite small studios or one-bedroom apartments. There can be appropriately small-sized unit for particular cohorts of the population and I think that that is important.