Mr. Ed Farrell:

The Government's social housing strategy paper published in November 2014 said that outside money such as pension and credit union funds could be put into a State-owned financial vehicle to fund the provision of social housing. That piece of the social housing strategy was medium term. It had other ways of getting funds, probably more directly, and the priority was to get that piece moving. This was a second phase. On that basis, we put the current proposal together to construct our own vehicle. It was not that social housing was a medium-term strategy but that that element of the strategy was medium term.