Comments warning of an over-supply of housing have been branded as 'bizzare' by Dr Rory Hearne.
The assistant professor in social policy at Maynooth University was responding to Conor Skehan, former chair of The Housing Agency.
Speaking to The Hard Shoulder on Tuesday, Mr Skehan said that an over-supply of housing becomes a 'runaway train'.
"A runaway train in housing wrecked the Irish economy in 2008," he said.
"We already have to have to start to watch out for the dangers of over-supply".
"We already have to start to watch out for the dangers of oversupply" Conor Skehan tells @KieranCuddihy that we must be wary of an oversupply in the housing market, on @TheHardShoulder. pic.twitter.com/oHf42zdlhH
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) April 25, 2023
On the show today, Dr Hearne said he disagrees.
"Bizzare was kind of my reaction - bizarre and frustration and anger around this idea that we're somehow in some situation of over-supply," he said.
"The last two years of the Celtic Tiger - 2006 and 2007 - half of all the new homes that were built... were bought as a second property.
"So it wasn't that people who needed homes were buying them.
"It was this pressure of additional purchase of property as an investment rather than a home that really pushed those prices".
Dr Hearne said he believes Mr Skehan is "completely disconnected from the reality of what is this housing catastrophe in this country."
He said a suggestion to 'do nothing' in the housing market to achieve stability is not the right approach.
"He advised the Minister for Housing, and this was his advice: do nothing," Dr Hearne said.
"Markets deliver when there's profit available and if they see sufficient profit.
"Housing is an expensive thing to deliver... if you leave a fundamental need of housing up to the market, sometimes you'll have delivery [and] sometimes you won't.
"You certainly won't have delivery if you can't afford to pay the market price, and this is the fundamental problem that we're in," he added.
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