Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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214. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide details on the review undertaken by his Department, of barriers to housing mobility, and the recommendations that were delivered to the Government on same, as promised in the Construction 2020 document, to be delivered by Quarter 2, 2014. [24685/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Construction 2020 set out seventy five action points across a wide range of Government Departments, public bodies and other interested parties that seeks to provide a functioning and sustainable property and housing sector. One of these, action point number 4, asked that the barriers to housing mobility be examined and recommendations made. In line with the timescale set out, a report on the barriers to housing mobility was prepared and, in accordance with their co-ordination requirements for the overall strategy, this was submitted to the Department of An Taoiseach. The identified key barriers affecting housing mobility were weak consumer confidence, high levels of unemployment, build-up of unsold stock, supply constraints in the greater Dublin area and other urban centres, negative equity, mortgage arrears and tracker mortgages.

A key conclusion was that market mobility should improve as the wider economy recovers and that this would have a positive effect on some of the main housing mobility barriers that were identified. In that regard, although there continues to be a need for caution and for the maintenance of sound overall economic policies, there have been some positive developments. In particular unemployment has fallen from 11.7% in May 2014 to 9.8% in May 2015 and the amount of new mortgage credit issued in Q1 2015 was €983 million compared to €568 million in Q1 2014. It was also recommended that key data in this area should continue to be monitored and should, where appropriate, form part of the rationale for policy proposals to implement Construction 2020.