Mr. John McCarthy:

The Housing Agency work will have been completed before the modelling for affordable rental, using O'Devaney Gardens, and before it gets to procurement stage.

The modelling needs to be done even before it gets to procurement. The Housing Agency work will have been completed at that stage. While the Housing Agency work is being done, we are trying to progress the modelling to a point that we have something to work with and we can take into account the findings of the Housing Agency study at that stage. I do not think one prejudices the other.

In terms of the use of a public asset, this depends to some extent on the size of a site. In many cases we have public lands and we will engage with the local authority about doing an exclusively social housing development with 40, 50, 60 or, in certain circumstances, even slightly more. On a site such as O'Devaney Gardens, which may accommodate 600 units, we need a more mixed-tenure model. It is not that it is either one or the other. There will be a social housing piece and a private housing piece within that. We will try to work in the new approach to affordable rental and try to get a return for the public good with lower rents. At this point I do not know how those lower rents will be determined because it will be influenced by the outcome of the modelling we will be undertaking with Dublin City Council and possibly with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund as well. Our overall objective on any of these sites is to try to ensure that we get the best outcome for the public good, purely through social housing in some circumstances and, in others, through larger but more mixed-tenure sustainable developments that try to encompass an affordable rental element as well.

There is considerable private development of student accommodation, but there is also a significant amount of activity either going on or planned by the higher education institutes. The next step on public lands that may have potential for student accommodation would be engagement with the higher education institutes and the Department of Education and Skills on their role. It is not necessary that it would automatically go into the private space. Rebuilding Ireland makes a commitment for the Department of Education and Skills to complete an overall student strategy in the second quarter of this year. We will try to dovetail both of those pieces of work together.