Mr. Simon Brook:

I am normally reluctant to use the word "crisis" but we are in a crisis. There is no question about it and the context for that is the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. That has gone both ways making it worse. The demand for social housing has increased among people who have a severe need for it. At its extreme, people are homeless. At other levels, people are living in extremely poor quality accommodation. There is a greater demand for social housing while at the same time the output of social housing has collapsed in recent years. We face enormous challenges in addressing that but as Mr. O'Gorman stated at the outset, we produced 400 new units last year and we are extremely proud of that. It is a very small contribution but, nevertheless, it is 400 households off local authority housing waiting lists who are now living in good quality housing, and we want to do better than that. Part of what we urge constantly is to make the current systems work as effectively as they possibly can and, where possible, to bring in new systems. There is not one simple solution to the problem of housing in Ireland. It requires a range of different solutions, which may well include leasing, but we also must make the target finance model work.