The information sought is available in the housing statistics bulletin for the September quarter 1999, published by my Department and available in the Oireachtas Library. The indices for private new house prices and house building costs measure different factors. The house price index measures changes in private new house prices which reflect the supply and demand for housing. The national house building cost index relates solely to standard wage rates set by the National Joint Industrial Council for the Construction Industry and average market prices for construction materials and does not include items such as development land prices, planning and development levies, planning fees, legal fees, marketing costs or profits, which are reflected in house prices and any house price index. The Deputy has also chosen to ignore the index for mortgage rates in the bulletin.
Housing demand has grown phenomenally in recent years due to a number of factors, including strong economic growth, historically low interest rates, increasing employment, rising levels of disposable income, and demographic changes, including high immigration and growth in the key household formation age groups. The Government strategy to moderate house price increases is based, therefore, on increasing the supply of housing. It has implemented a comprehensive range of initiatives to this end and these measures are having an effect. The trend in house price increases is moderating. Record housing output was again achieved in 1999 with new house completions nationally up more than 10% in the first 11 months of 1999 over the same period in 1998. Significantly, in Dublin, where the supply demand imbalance was most critical, the increase in output was running at 16%.
