Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I do not know either, which is why I asked the question.

4 o’clock

We do not know how much crowding out is happening, but there is a bunch of things we do know. We know that the profits per square metre or per acre of development land for commercial property in Cork and Dublin vastly exceed the profits to be made from residential. We know that some of this is being driven by a tax-free status that has been given to property developers for highly dubious reasons.

We know that commercial rents for SMEs in Dublin have doubled in the past two to three years and, of course, we have seen a massive explosion in residential rents. We know that many bad things are happening because of this commercial property bubble. However, we do not know how bad the potential crowding out is. We know it is likely given normal incentives for a developer to hold land. The Minister has said there is a swathe of land for 27,000 residential units in Dublin and yet only 4,000 are being done. Part of the reason may be that people, knowing they can make five times more money from office than residential, are holding it in order to try to get a change of planning.

There is a property bubble, which now appears to include Cork. We know there are adverse effects. It is reasonable to assume that one of those is the crowding out of residential development.

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