Mr. Jerome Casey:

I will respond to the general view as per our submission on the legislation. It is important. It is a tidying-up exercise by the Department in terms of the Supreme Court judgment in the Donegan case, and the fact that when they were trying to get repossession against people involved in anti-social behaviour they were unable to do so because the procedures were not right and there was not some independence in it. We welcome that.

The housing assistance payment has been discussed for 20 years. It would seem to make strategic sense that it would go from the Department of Social Protection to a housing body that has overall responsibility for housing. We would support that. The approach with tenant purchase is that some of the value should come back if a tenant sells on a home and gets profit from it. Some of the profit should go back to the State that created the asset. That is the broad substance of the legislation. To me it is a tidying-up piece of housing miscellaneous provisions legislation which the Government tends to introduce every two or three years to deal with issues. In fairness to the Department and the Minister, it is a follow-on to the housing policy statement. Some of the policies that were enumerated in it in 2011 are being put on a legislative basis. In that context one would say the Bill is addressing policy via legislative methods. I will hand over to my colleague to comment on the German model.