Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank each of the witnesses for coming in and joining us online today. It is greatly appreciated. I thank them for their work on the Housing Commission as well, which is also very much appreciated. It was a very extensive body of work setting out more than 80 recommendations and so on. It was a very substantive piece of work. It is all about housing output, housing activation and how we can stimulate activity rather than getting into the minutiae of other issue relating to housing. I note the language in the report and the language here today is about brave decisions and emergency actions, a radical approach and so on. Undoubtedly we need to take brave decisions and very significant measures, and urgently, to try to grapple with the crisis we are in. We are spending €6.8 billion of public funds on housing, which is the second highest in Europe in terms of our spend. We are spending a lot of public money so the solution has to be in generating private finance and private investment in housing. Of course we can look at more from the State but there are limitations to what the State can do. How do we get increased private investment into housing and activating construction? That is a very broad question. I am not sure who I am asking so I will keep it open to whoever wants to come in. How do we significantly increase private investment? It is nowhere near the level it needs to be at.