Vol. 468 No. 2
107 Mr. N. Ahern asked the Minister for the Environment the reason his Department did not reply to part A of the OECD survey of member states on housing affordability; if he will give details for the past five years of our housing expenditure rates vis-à-vis average house price to household incomes; and if he will make a statement in relation to housing affordability. [14856/96]
I understand that Ireland was not represented in this OECD study and, accordingly, the question of a reply by my Department did not arise. However, my Department publishes in the Bulletins of Housing Statistics — copies of which are available in the Oireachtas Library — a series of indices which relate private new house prices to the average earnings of adult workers. These indices show that, in the five years 1990 to 1994, average earnings, based on figures provided by the Central Statistics Office, increased by 16 per cent and average new house prices by 11 per cent. The 1995 average earnings figure is not yet available.
