Dr. Robert Sweeney:

The Chair mentioned a couple of things there, following on from his first question, including some of the challenges that we have in healthcare and housing. I will talk a little about housing because that impacts the broader strength of the economy and is also the site of much of our emissions. One of the challenges we face is in the planning system. Another is how we move towards more sustainable forms of construction and I will plug some of TASC's work in that regard. We have ongoing research into what are called modern methods of construction which involve building parts of housing off-site, in factories. That potentially is a much more sustainable or emissions-friendly method of construction compared with building everything with concrete on site. It also has the potential to facilitate increases in supply. The research is ongoing but there are a number of challenges in the modern methods of construction sector. The reason for adopting such methods is that they are a form of rapid build. However, there are issues with rapid build. For instance, there is no point in engaging in rapid build, off-site construction if one is then waiting for three months for Irish Water to service the site with infrastructure. That is one of the challenges. We obviously have challenges in our planning system in terms of increasing the supply of both public and private housing. In terms of public housing, not everyone wants it in their vicinity. Not everyone wants apartments in their vicinity either but if we do not have density, not only will we have difficulty in providing accommodation for the people of Dublin, but we will also have problems with meeting our emissions targets. One of the reasons for our high emissions is that we have a sprawling population which encourages car dependency. If we could somehow address some of the challenges in our planning system, that would have a positive effect on housing and would also help us to meet our emissions targets. It would help to increase the supply of housing which would have positive knock-on effects for the economy and, ultimately, the Exchequer balance.