Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

On the housing side we obviously agree with the Deputy that this is a major issue socially and for the economy and for labour supply, costs and many things. We have seen shortfalls in capital spending, the amount of money that is being spent, but as the Deputy has rightly pointed out, we have also seen inflation in costs and that has come from two places. Some of that is domestic labour costs and associated things and that is something we had foreseen. As this is a very big ramp-up in investment spending, that will put pressure on supply. What we had not foreseen was the impact of global factors, such as shortages of things like timber coming out of the pandemic and higher energy prices feeding into cement and steel prices and so on. There are a lot of cost pressures and a big question is how that will be managed. Will the same investment be delivered over longer periods, which keeps it within the same budget in cash terms but means we get less at any given point in time or will the Government have to spend more? It is clear, for example, in an area like housing, the needs are very pressing and it is not an area where anyone would be thinking of deferring the spending. It is a big challenge. The level of investments we are going to in Ireland are historically very high. They are very high by EU comparison. I am not sure that we ever said that they are appropriate but we do know there is a big housing challenge and a lot of investment required around climate, so it is clear that investment will be very high. We can debate whether these are the exact numbers. One of the problems, particularly on the climate side, is that we do not really have a very clear plan from the Government as to how much investment is actually needed to manage those targets. It is important to articulate that much better but ultimately supply, particularly on the housing side, and the many bottlenecks there really do need to be addressed. It has been an issue in Ireland for such a long time.