Mr. Conor O'Kelly:

I was not referring to the PPP. I do not believe that PPP is a significant solution for social housing, given the scale one would need to get an effective PPP and the timelines involved. The current PPP experiment project is for 1,500 houses - three bundles of 500 houses - but they will not be built to move into until 2020 or 2021 by the time one goes through all the public procurement, which is extremely onerous as the Deputy knows. The identification of sites is a difficulty there, so personally I do not believe that PPPs will be a solution for social housing. Looking for PPPs to be a solution is a mistake and will not be productive.

I was talking about two initiatives concerning the NTMA on social housing. NAMA has a fund which we are looking at the possibility of replicating. If properties are for sale which approved housing bodies or local authorities want to purchase, which they have identified as being appropriate for social housing, for which they do not have the capital or money and cannot or do not want to borrow the money, this vehicle would buy the property on their behalf and enter into a lease with them over 20 or 25 years. This vehicle already exists and has worked quite well for properties that NAMA has been selling, which have been identified. A vehicle already exists within NAMA which has more than 1,000 units in it. The approved housing bodies and local authorities have found it to be useful. They do not have to provide upfront capital cost, so this fund could bring in capital from the strategic investment fund as well as external capital, potentially, and access a vehicle that could buy the houses and even buy Part V houses and new houses being built, therefore accelerating that programme. That is one of the suggestions we have made that we think has possibilities.

The other one is where the strategic investment fund would look to create a fund that would be drawn down for enabling infrastructure. We have heard many reports that there are 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 houses, even in the greater Dublin area, that could be built and are waiting for enabling infrastructure to get started. We are talking to developers and local authorities about creating a fund that would lend money over the long term in a way that other financial institutions would not do. It may take in the houses themselves as collateral and ultimately take in the levies that might be created as ways of paying down the loan over time. We think that proposal could be impactful, so we are taking a close look at it.

They are the two live areas for the NTMA in the strategic investment fund. There are so many other initiatives but for our area of expertise the questions are whether we can bring in co-investors, whether we can keep it off-balance sheet, and whether we can create a model that may be replicated by other institutional investors and therefore get some scale. There is really no point in us adding to opinions or activities that are already being covered by other areas.