Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

It is a very interesting and complex question. As we were arguing with Deputy O'Donnell earlier, that kind of proposition should stand on its own merits and not necessarily be related to the windfall revenue. Whether we finance it with windfall revenue or something else does not really matter. The question is whether that policy makes sense with respect to costs, benefits and its sustainability. There are various modes of providing public supports for housing and we are not experts on them but there should not be any particular prejudices about that. It should be based on what is the most cost-effective way of doing it. Much more money has gone into housing supports over recent years to help people with their rents as rents have gone up. There is a question about whether that is the best mode of delivery for that support or if there is a better mode. A related question in any such scheme is whether the State is taking on more responsibility for more people, that is, whether it is subsidising, in some ways, a wider range of people than might be the case with current supports. Any scheme like that needs to be looked at for costs and benefits. We have made no assessment of that and we are not the right the people to.

Underlying that is the real problem that there is just a shortage of accommodation overall. More accommodation needs to be built. The difficulty is that there are many supply constraints. Even in the best country in the world, we know that is not a problem that can be solved overnight. Even if we undid a lot of the bottlenecks it takes time to build a house and it needs some resources that are specialised. It is not something we can just buy from abroad, in a way. If we want more wind farms we can just buy them from another country or at least buy many of the components. We have to building housing here with our own resources, even if we are importing many of them too. Thus, that is a real constraint. However, there are a lot of additional constraints, caused by various factors, in the context of supply in that industry. That is a real constraint in the context of solving the problem. If more progress could be made on solving that, it would be beneficial to the economy. It would also makes housing less costly, which would also be beneficial to the public finances. As the Deputy said, it is a win-win, but it is hard to achieve that fundamental increase in the number of properties, which is what is needed.