Ms Lynn Boylan:

We would say that the housing crisis was exacerbated by the former Minister. We will have to disagree on that. We certainly raised the issue of the funding of social housing when we met officials from the European Investment Bank. We are investigating the very good examples they gave us of how that was done in Britain. Sinn Féin has proposed the use of arm's-length companies to enable local authorities to access funding and thereby be in a position to invest in social housing. When we meet the officials in question, we also raised the possibility of an increase in the European Investment Bank ratio from 50:50 to a lending ratio of 75:25 for the purposes of social housing or job creation. We were told that there is no legal impediment to that. We will pursue that possibility. We believe the lending capacity of the European Investment Bank should be increased because its current capacity is too small.