Mr. John Hogan:

As the Senator is probably aware, the credit union movement has been looking for opportunities in which it can make investments. I understand it has been talking to the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government to see if there is some role it can play in providing funding for social housing. In recent times it also spoke to the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, about what sort of possibilities it could provide to work with the credit union movement, but it comes back to what Mr. Moran said about finding the appropriate model that can work alongside it. The credit unions are investing and they want a particular rate of return and there are a number of other competing providers of finance that are involved in providing funding to those types of sectors. In the social housing area the European Investment Bank, EIB, for example, has been quite active at providing low cost funding through the Housing Finance Agency. The EIB and KfW have been involved at early stages with the SBCI in providing funding. The work is ongoing but it is very much around trying to find the correct model that matches the risk and rewards that can come to a productive outcome.