Mr. Conor O'Kelly:

Potentially, yes. There can be a difficulty in terms of whether sites available for social housing are of a scale sufficient for the EIB to consider them for projects. That is a challenge.

As the Deputy knows, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund is examining a number of areas in regard to various vehicles, but that does not necessarily include the EIB. It does include attracting private capital off-balance sheet to try to create some vehicles in the area of social housing, which is following the NARPS model that exists in NAMA and which we are trying to expand. I refer also to the addition of a fund for infrastructure around sites to enable the building of houses.

Therefore those two off-balance sheet funds are being examined right now by the strategic investment fund. Both have possibilities and have been included in the Minister's plan.