Mr. Justin O'Brien:

I appreciate the comment that Deputy Durkan made and which has been made by other members of the committee. It is a perception or a view that has been expressed and we have to listen to it as a sector. I would say, as Dr. Donal McManus said earlier, that we currently provide over 30,000 units of accommodation. The perception is that we are mainly gifted to provide special needs housing for the elderly, the homeless or people with learning disability but the vast majority of our provision is family housing. That is the truth of it - it is about 70% of what we do, so we are delivering.

There are issues and it is not that we are trying to take away from local authorities - we are trying to add value. We think we have a specialism, our key performance indicators are good and our work complements the local authorities. It is also the case when one goes through the finances that the bulk of funding that has been given for the capital programmes over the last ten years has mainly gone to local authorities and not to approved housing bodies. That is the truth of it. We have to compete with it - there is truth in that too but we are also trying to secure money from other sources off the Government balance sheet to enable delivery to meet public housing need. That model has worked effectively in other north European countries.