Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for coming in today. It is a big crew. It is frustrating that we have a short amount of time to go through these things. I have a couple of questions for different groups, starting with CIF and Mr. O'Connell. We all want to see affordable homes. That is what we need. In my view the main type of supply should be affordable homes. On reducing the cost of delivery, land and infrastructure and then finance, there is a serious danger that if we zone lots more land, it will be bought up, hoarded and speculated. Rather than zoning leading to more affordable land input, it essentially adds to the cost. In the Netherlands, the state compulsorily purchases a large amount of land, master-plans it and puts in the infrastructure, and then contracts builders to build. I do not know if Mr. O'Connell has a comment on that. The other area is finance. What is the CIF's experience of getting finance from the State through Home Building Finance Ireland and other State agencies? Is there more we could be doing to provide finance to builders through the State? We put forward our own proposal for a new savings scheme on that.

To the Housing Alliance, we spoke before about delays in cost rental and social housing. Has there been any update on that? It was mentioned in the opening statement. What does the Housing Alliance see as its capacity to ramp up delivery of affordable housing?

To Glenveagh and Cairn, there is a big issue which we have discussed previously and which I have raised often. I have no problem with the private market delivering housing. While it has a key role, I believe the State should also be a builder and developer. I do not see any reason we should not have the State and the private sector both delivering. In terms of Glenveagh's and Cairn's financial model, is there a fundamental issue in that they are shareholder-type companies? They are delivering homes and want to maximise the homes they are trying to deliver but there is that other aspect of maximising the return to their shareholders. Ultimately that is what they are about. Do they feel that part of the cost reduction that could happen in housing would be reducing the amount of dividend going to shareholders in their companies? For Cairn last year the figure was €111 million, which I estimate to be about €50,000 per home sold last year. A lot of people would have concerns that significant public money is going to their shareholders. I have looked through the shareholders and for both Cairn and Glenveagh, they are large, global wealth funds such as J.P. Morgan, Fidelity, BlackRock, and Tellus Capital. They are not just builders who are building and putting the money back into housing. There is a significant issue with this return of dividend to shareholders. I wonder if our guests could comment on that.