Mr. Jim O'Keeffe:

When we were before the committee discussing this on the previous occasion, a point was made about providing social houses or houses to the Housing Agency. We would have referred to an initiative launched by the Housing Agency where it was working with the financial sector and a pool of approximately €70 million to try to acquire property at that point. From our perspective we have fully engaged, and before the end of the year we will contract approximately 280 properties into that initiative. We expect that we will take the vast majority of that funding.

From our understanding with the Housing Agency we will account for approximately €55 million of the €70 million made available to the financial sector. We have made good progress with the Housing Agency in that regard. We found the process to be good and we invested many resources to help co-ordinate the activity across the group. Once the fund is replenished by the agency - it will sell properties to the approved housing bodies - we will be in a position to engage further with them on the properties.