Ms Karen Murphy:

As regards Senator Boyhan's question on the staffing issue, there are a significant number of unknowns in respect of this issue, which is why we are asking for a cross-departmental team to be established as soon as possible to keep it on a priority footing and ensure an early timeframe for resolving the issues involving EUROSTAT possibly returning a decision confirming the CSO's recommendation and also in terms of returning the sector to its previous status of non-profit institutes serving households off balance sheet. We must emphasise that in regard to those unknowns because we do not want any resultant uncertainty to have an impact on the delivery of housing and the decisions that are being taken at board level to ensure that we continue to ramp up delivery, as has been done in recent years.

As regards the question on the sources of income, we have over 250 members, all of whom are autonomous in terms of decision making. Their sources of income vary but generally comprise rent from tenants, a significant amount of fundraising and income from local authorities through mechanisms such as the payment and availability agreement. There are also specialist bodies which provide services to vulnerable tenants and receive State funds from organisations other than local authorities, such as the HSE. In terms of the accounts of several bodies included in the CSO assessment, less than 50% of current funding in each of the bodies we looked at was State money. Over 50% of current income came from rent in the bodies mainly providing housing whose accounts we examined.