Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I agree with the Deputy. We hold the units back with our debtors by saying to them, "Hold that back until the local authority comes back. Keep it vacant in case it wants it". As soon as the local authority turns them down and our debtor puts them up for rental in the private sector, however, they are snapped up in 24 hours. That is the major issue.

The Deputy's third question relates to our commercial remit. NAMA has not borrowed money since its inception. We paid the banks with Government guaranteed bonds. It started out at €30 billion. We have paid off €25 billion and we are down to €5 billion. The plan is to pay that off by 2018. The borrowing vehicle for the Government is the NTMA and it is up to the Minister for Finance if more money is to be borrowed. We all know the rates on the market at present. Ten-year money can be borrowed at 0.8%. It is unprecedented how cheap that money is when the long-term average is 5.5%. That is again a policy matter for Government in terms of whether it wants to borrow money in this cheaper interest rate environment and use it for that purpose. I can see from where the Deputy is coming.