Dr. Seán Healy:

I would like to speak about two other items that have been raised. We have done a lot of work on cost rental. We have been doing it for a number of years. We made a presentation on how this might actually work to the Dublin Economics Workshop in Wexford two or three years ago, when this was not on anybody's agenda. We have developed our proposals now. I would have been more optimistic about the scale of the impact of our proposals if a special purpose vehicle had been established to keep the actual amounts off the budgetary accounts. We have worked out how that could be done involving various agencies like the European Investment Bank, the Government and social housing organisations. We have done a lot of work in this area. We are quite happy to share it with the committee at any time.

In our view, the help to buy scheme should not be extended under any circumstance. Basically, it is contributing to the escalation of cost increases. We are very much of the view that rather than subsidising the person who is trying to buy the house, there needs to be a focus on the provision of housing and on elements that will bring down the cost of housing. If the person is being subsidised to buy the house, it will always result in the price of the house going up by the same amount of money. We are negative about anything that involves pushing up the price. We are negative about the proposal anyway. We would be quite happy to see it end at the end of this year.