Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the visitors. Recently in the Seanad we found that out of the first 5,000 houses offered by NAMA to local authorities, only 1,000 were taken up. It seems amazing that four fifths of housing that exists has not been taken. When the then Minister of State with responsibility for this area, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, was in the Department, there was an amazingly slow turnover of local authority houses - so much so that some of them were vandalised - but money was voted and provided to speed up the process. Do the witnesses wish to make observations on those two aspects of the housing scene?