Mr. Niall Conroy:

Infrastructure and water delivery, in particular, are clearly important for delivering housing. Housing has to be connected to clean water and wastewater treatment. Some of the issues around the projects in Dublin have been delayed not just through delays in delivery from the Government but just because there are such issues in the planning system. We see continuous objections to some of these projects and things coming through judicial review. That slows things down for a substantial amount of time. There are proposals to reform how the planning system operates and perhaps raise the threshold for people objecting to projects either in the local area or further away and raising the bar for judicial reviews. If that were to occur, it would make it easier for the private sector to deliver things but it would make it easier for the public sector to deliver things as well. It has a big impact on delivering public sector investment. That has implications for costs as well. As the Deputy says, naturally, the longer you delay things costs typically go up. There is also a kind of cost inherent in having to delay. You have already invested time and resources in developing a project. Sometimes it goes through the planning system and you end up having to revise it due to the time elapsed in the meantime.

On the second point around the slowdown in the economy, we do not really see any great evidence of that so far. Some of the indicators you would expect to see in real time are income tax receipts, VAT receipts and PRSI and we are not seeing any great slowdown with those for the moment. Obviously, it is something we will be keeping a close eye on. On the final point about corporation tax and the large multinationals we have here, we clearly have a reliance on these companies but we would still rather have them than not have them.