Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, for its contribution and reports, which are always interesting and informative. I would like to follow on from the last point because it seems to me that some to degree, all roads lead to the housing problem in this country. The witnesses mentioned the need to plan staffing for the health service, I could say the same about education and a number of other areas and it is often that very cohort of people, who have recently trained or qualified in these fields, who are the cohort I suspect are leaving this country at the moment, that is, the younger ones, precisely because it is too expensive to live here. They go to Australia or Canada or wherever, where accommodation is cheaper. We are facing a huge social crisis and it is causing a lot of suffering but it is a win-win if we solve it.

One thing strikes me, although maybe the witnesses think it is simplistic. I get that their basic point is if we keep core spending at a level that does not contribute to inflation, that is okay. One-off measures to mitigate the impact on the vulnerable are fine so they are happy enough with that but do not increase core spending to a level that could potentially lead to inflation. Maybe I have not thought it all through but certainly something we have argued is that it would be a good use of the windfall revenues the State has at its disposal to massively increase its stock of housing. It could do so both through construction and through direct purchase of stock, because every single addition to the State's housing stock in terms of public housing or cost-rental affordable housing also reduces current expenditure on the other side. The State gets an asset which is revenue-generating and it reduces proportionately the amount of money it has to fork out each year in current expenditure for the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, housing assistance payment, HAP, and leasing arrangements. It also means the State will have a bit more control over the cost of housing. In other words, it can make more cheap housing available, which obviously benefits the groups we have just talked about, who might not leave if they have affordable housing here. Would that be a reasonable way to spend the windfall revenues? It would be much more ambitious, far-reaching expenditure in the here and now to dramatically expand the public housing stock through construction and through the purchase of stock particularly where there is a lot of talk about landlords exiting the market. The point I am making is that if the landlords decide they want to exit for whatever reason, the property does not have to exit if the State purchases it.

From a fiscal point of view, would that be a prudent use of windfall revenues that are available that would not contribute to the concerns the council has about inflation, increasing indebtedness or whatever? It would actually help reduce those things because we would be less reliant on current expenditure to make up for the shortfall we have in public housing. Obviously, the members of the council do not have to endorse my policy.