Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

We are in the first six months of a new administration. Certainly, there will not be the added buoyancy in tax revenues that applied in the past and an adjustment is taking place in the residential housing market that must be completed to allow for a soft landing. The sustainable level of housing output, based on demographics, demand and so on, is reckoned to be between 60,000 and 70,000 per year. We must examine, therefore, the manner in which this adjustment can take place in a way that does not militate against the continuing health of the property market. This is something we can do based on the economic fundamentals that exist because it is clear that we cannot consider a continuing housing output of 90,000 per year, as was the record set last year.

Our projections in the last budget for the performance of the economy this year allowed for housing output to be eased to a level of around 70,000 to 75,000, rather than the output level of 60,000 to 65,000 that is expected now.

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