Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 March 2023
Committee on Budgetary Oversight
Stability Programme Update: Discussion
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I will elaborate on the question slightly. Objectively, demand will not go down in the sense that people will need housing.
Regardless of what interest rates are, the same number of people who are projected to need housing will still need it. They may not have that demand backed by the willingness of banks to lend them the money, but they will still need to be housed. If interest rates going up means banks will not lend them money, that demand will land somewhere else in the housing sector, but the demand will still be there. In objective terms the demand is the demand and demographics will decide what that demand is even if the willingness of banks to lend reduces a particular type of demand.