Mr. John Crawley:

We have briefed the Department. In terms of the context, the docklands area has an affordable housing scheme under the legislation governing it. A number of people have bought affordable homes, some of whom have clawback arrangements as part of their purchase. The clawback arrangements arose because people bought properties at discounts. The objective of the scheme in the first place was to discourage people from flipping properties and to benefit people who were long-stay in the area, which is why the clawback reduces over a 20-year period to encourage locals.

When the scheme was developed, in truth, nobody thought of a scenario where house prices would fall, more importantly, they thought they would continue to rise. Therefore, an issue arises where property values have fallen, although interestingly in the docklands area we are seeing them rise back up again, and we are not seeing as much pressure from people in affordable schemes. None the less, a situation can arise where the properties can fall in value and there could be a clawback that has still to come back to the authority. That is a legal requirement. It gets the authority into difficulty to try to forgive that although we have put in place arrangements to allow people to rent their properties in the event that the situation arises.

The scheme is at variance with the rest of the affordable housing elsewhere in the country. We have brought that to the attention of the Department. It is not currently dealt with in the heads of the Bill. It is probably something one would need to raise with the Department when the officials are before the committee next week. We have identified the issues. We have identified some cases where it manifests itself in a financial difficulty, slightly less so now because the market has moved on but at the same time it also recognises that people have entered into legal agreements. To be fair to other people who live in the same accommodation and possibly did not buy at affordable prices we cannot seem to benefit one buyer over the other but it is a bit of a minefield area and we have given a full brief to the Department. Deputy Humphreys could possibly take up the matter with the Department next week.