Mr. John Knox:

The Chairman raised the issue of social housing and the status of our social housing proposal. The Irish League of Credit Unions proposal on social housing and on credit unions providing funding for social housing is a direct response to the Government social housing strategy 2020, which was published in November 2014.

The strategy stated that in light of the unprecedented crisis in social housing, there was a need for private funding to be sourced to help alleviate the social housing crisis as quickly as possible. It specifically mentioned sourcing private funding from the credit union movement. Our proposals launched in October 2015 were a direct response to that call from Government. In terms of the engagement with the Department of Finance and the then Department of the environment, there was a large amount of activity between the launch of the strategy and our proposal response. We received a lot of assistance in the preparation of our proposal from the officials of the Department of the environment in particular. We hope that the Government will implement what is its own social housing strategy which mentions, and is reiterated again in the programme for a partnership Government, that it will investigate using money from the credit union movement to help alleviate the social housing crisis.

There is a road block in that the fund that is to be set up by Government must be off balance sheet. We understand that is where the difficulty currently lies. To satisfy the EUROSTAT requirements, the Government must raise private funding in this way and not have it included on the Government balance sheet, because that is not allowed. In that regard, we were very happy with and appreciative of the Minister, Deputy Coveney's attendance at a recent meeting with the credit unions in Cork in which he outlined that there are moves in that regard and that there has been engagement between the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, etc., with EUROSTAT on that issue. We hope that roadblock will be lifted.

In parallel to that, when that preferred option, from our point of view, was not progressing as quickly as we would have liked, we also made proposals for developing a private fund that would indirectly lend to the approved housing bodies, which would then build the social houses. All of that is outlined in the document that has kindly been circulated to the committee on our behalf. In that regard, we continue to engage with the Irish Council for Social Housing and the equivalent representative body for the approved housing bodies. We are engaging with them and with some of the larger housing bodies on how a fund could be developed for credit unions to invest in that would then be loaned to the housing bodies. That is where we are at with that.

As the Cathaoirleach correctly outlined, the driving force is that credit unions have a large amount of surplus funds from the holding of members' savings. As they are not all on loan at the moment, there is a large amount held in investments in the main pillar banks and in Government bonds. What the credit union movement would like to see is more of that money being used in a social and productive fashion, in keeping with our ethos. Of course, the knock-on benefit for credit unions would be a slightly higher return on those funds.