CIF calls for house price register

The Construction Industry Federation is urging the Minister for Housing to look at bringing together a panel of interested parties to provide a new egister of house prices.

The Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index - ong viewed as a trusted barometer of the housing market - will now only be issued on a quarterly basis rather than each month.

Director General of the CIF Tom Parlon said he has asked Minister Michael Finneran to bring together those who could potentially supply the statistics.

"Clearly the CSO (Central Statistics Office) have a major role to play in that type of data collection," Mr Parlon said.

"Likewise the Minister for Housing, the Department of the Environment, the ESRI, CIF representing the industry… And I have asked Minister Finneran to call a round-table group of all of the interested parties whereby we could come up with a system and a formula to give much more accurate house price data."