Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage

Challenges Relating to the Delivery of Housing: Discussion (Resumed)

2:00 am

Dr. Conor O'Toole:

I will add one thing on the modern methods of construction. It is one of those mechanisms that we can and must leverage as quickly as we possibly can. Often, one finds with some of these that the order size matters – the ability to build up the infrastructure to use these. One mechanism could be that the State is a backstop and ensures it provides enough orders for the social housing system or for the affordable housing system over time to allow the capacity to be built up for the factories to build those and to build the capacity in that sector.

On the 100% mortgages, let us not go back there. We had a terrible experience of that in the past. It creates unneeded credit risks, and looser credit is not going to solve our housing crisis.