Mr. Vasileios Madouros:

Development finance is important in the context of housing supply. It is a capital-intensive activity. Capital upfront is required to build houses. We looked at housing and housing supply in an in-depth piece of work that we did last year, which we would be happy to share with the Deputy. It examined the issue and the question of development financing. I can provide him with our headlines from that.

Additional development financing is not in and of itself going address some of the main challenges we have with housing supply. This relates to some of the issues we have talked about today and in other equivalent fora. The availability of zoned land, availability of serviced land and therefore the accompanying infrastructure, the planning system, reviews and planning delays and productivity in the construction sector are some of the key fundamental factors. When we looked at development financing on the debt side, our overall assessment was availability of debt financing does not seem to be the main constraint on new housing supply. There is balance sheet capacity, both from the perspective of banking system but also from non-bank lenders, which have become particularly important in the provision of financing for construction, including for smaller companies. Where it is more of a constraint is on the equity side for some of the construction companies. That is related to some of the fundamental factors. My colleague Dr. O'Brien referenced scale earlier about productivity, but also the provision of serviced land. This is the area on the equity side that there is more equity constraint for some of these companies.