Mr. Dick Brady:

The first thing to note is that a figure of 6,000 units gets quoted regularly. My understanding is that it would be significantly less than that and somewhere in the order of 4,000 units would be more to the point. I cannot be more specific than that because of the way in which the NAMA units were presented to us in the first place, which was interesting in itself. They were presented to us through the Housing Agency, which had signed a confidentiality agreement, so the first round of offers were numbers plus general areas, to which the local authorities went back and replied in respect of numbers and general areas. We did not get addresses in the initial phases because NAMA did not own the properties. They were still in receivership. It owned the loans or whatever but it did not own the properties, so it could not, due to confidentiality reasons, release names to third parties. Until such time as it did deals with the owners, we could not get addresses, which is why I say I am not sure the number is 6,000. It certainly is a lot less and I think it would be closer to 4,000.

On our own position and the reasons we refused such accommodation, the first reason was that tenants were already in the properties. Second, the units did not meet construction standards. We were not happy with the units. Third, there may have been legal issues in respect of the properties. The other big reason, after the first round, was that NAMA itself withdrew properties. In the city council's case, it withdrew somewhere in the order of 200 properties. These properties were not being given to us gratis. In other words, we had to pay for them, whether that be by means of leasing arrangements through NARPS or purchase. They, therefore, had to demonstrate value for money and in some instances they did not demonstrate value for money. There were other reasons relating to due diligence that crept into the matter. The final issue would have been an already high concentration of units in an area. We would have had lots of units in areas already and, on that basis, we did not take them. We are now in 2016 looking back at something that started in 2011 and the policy context in which we were operating at that stage, and to some degree still are, was set out in Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities, which deals with, as Bairbre Nic Aongusa has already stated, and talks about social sustainability etc. Those are the main reasons we refused units. However, I can also say that we accepted some units in all of the developments, by and large, that we were offered.