Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank all the contributors. I am sorry I missed the opening statements but I was over in the Dáil. I had read through most of their submissions and I thank them.

I want to ask about the State construction company that NERI asked about because I am very much in favour of that. Does anybody have an opinion on that? NERI mentioned in its document that one way to use some of the windfall funds might be invest them as seed capital for a State construction company. Maybe they would like to elaborate on that point. I strongly agree with it.

If we are talking about capacity constraints, it is fairly clear. Goodbody did a thing recently that said there are very few builders and private developers who can undertake on-scale delivery of housing. There are just too many small builders and not enough scale. Would the witnesses agree that is a problem and that we must do something about it? Especially now that we have to, in effect, more than double our housing output, would it not just be really foolish to just hope that the private sector will be able to ramp up to the scale necessary to meet these targets? Is it not the case that the State must intervene and that it would be a prudent use of money to have a body very actively trying to recruit, train and get back from Australia and Canada those people who we could possibly lure back? Should we not do whatever we have to do to get the construction capacity we need to deliver the amount of housing necessary, especially in the social and affordable area?

I do not know if the witnesses can give opinions on this aspect, but if we are now talking about 60,000 to 70,000 houses being necessary annually to address the crisis, which is not going to be addressed for some considerable time, and that is very depressing, how many of these houses must be social and affordable? It seems to me that a very high proportion must be social and affordable houses. I do not see how the market's supply and demand is going to bring down the cost of housing any time soon, given we are talking about such a long period to even get close to meeting demand, with the level of pent-up demand we have. I would like to hear the witnesses' comments on this point. It seems to me, however, that as there is no way supply is going to reach a level where prices or rents will go down any time soon, we are going to have to subsidise housing and we are going to have to subsidise it on a very large scale. Otherwise, we will be building stuff that nobody can afford. In fact, that is already what we are doing. I would almost go as far as saying that I do not see any point in building stuff that nobody can afford. What is the point in doing that? Is that not what we did during the Celtic tiger years and why the whole economy crashed? We then had ten years where we were told we should not spend anything, and now we have an even worse situation. I would like to hear comments on these points.

Turning to the use of money, I take the point that too much money chasing too few goods and constraints in that regard can cause inflation. How much of inflation, however, comes about for that reason and how much of it is down to profiteering? An example is a bicycle shed that cost more than a house. Is that happening because we are putting too much money in or is it because people are profiteering and charging us too much? How much of that is going on? Is this not an issue that must be addressed? I do not know if the witnesses are looking at the stuff on the breakdown of the cost of a house, but I saw something recently stating that approximately €150,000 is accounted for by actual construction costs, while there are then many other things involved, including profit margins, VAT, the cost of land, etc. These are things we can address that could actually bring down the price of houses. Does this impact on the witnesses' concerns about inflation? How much of inflation is profiteering? Do we not need to look at this issue? It strikes me that we do need to do so.

I will have to give the witnesses some time to respond to these questions, but on the water infrastructure issue I wish to agree with Deputy Canney in terms of spending. In my area, the council has been sitting on land that is zoned for development but it has not put in the water infrastructure. I wonder if there is a bit of mystification about how difficult it is to service land. The Ó Cualann housing body, for example, has told us that it was looking to develop some of that land but that it was for some inexplicable reason told "No" because of servicing. I talked to people close to Ó Cualann and asked them if servicing was really a big problem. They told me it was not and that it is not rocket science to service land. Apparently, it takes years, but actually it should not. The Shanganagh site is a good example of this problem. It was handed over to the State 17 years ago for the building of social housing but only now are we going to see the first houses being built there because of all this servicing stuff.

I will also ask the witnesses for their opinion on planning. Is it not the case that planning permissions far exceed commencements? Getting planning permission is not the problem; rather, the problem lies with building the stuff.

My last question goes to the witnesses from the Central Bank. It is a flipping scandal that we are facilitating the sale of Israeli war bonds that are being openly touted as financing the genocide going on in Gaza and now terrorism on an absolutely despicable scale in Lebanon. We are facilitating this activity. I think I heard the witnesses say to Deputy Conway-Walsh that this depends on Europe and so on. I do not know how much of this is the responsibility of the Central Bank or of the Government, but we have legal obligations that I would argue Europe is in breach of. Do we have the right to meet our legal obligations? Under the Genocide Convention we are legally required not to contribute to genocide and to do anything necessary to stop it. I would say this gives us the legal right and, arguably, the obligation under Irish and international law to not facilitate the commission of genocide, crimes or breaches of international law. I ask the witnesses about this aspect because I do not really buy the European legal excuse. I think we should be suing Europe for its breach of its own treaties with Israel and its own obligations under international law.