Dr. Donal McManus:

The Deputy mentioned the over-dependency on the sector in recent years. Over the past three or four years, the sector was responding to market failure. Interventions included acquiring properties through NAMA, receivers and so forth. AHBs used funding mechanisms such as the CALF and P&A payments to provide housing, otherwise 4,000 to 5,000 people on the waiting lists would not have been housed. That was more of a pragmatic solution. There was a major market failure and there were opportunities for the sector to avail of. We tried to cobble together different financial mechanisms with different institutions and they worked in some cases but it was tortuous to go through that. It was not a clean ride. People worked together, new funding arrangements were put in place and new experience was built up. We responded to the market failure, which had gone on for a number of years, but we had to do that as a country.

Those will be under construction for a while and it will take a couple of years to put them in place. There are vacant properties and the sector decided to use them in the most creative way possible. It is a more pragmatic solution.

The numbers are pretty clear. As Mr. Brennan mentioned, in respect of the Government's numbers under Rebuilding Ireland, the bulk of supply will come through the private sector. Local authorities are dominant in the social housing sector and two thirds will come from that side. We hope that will speed up in terms of on-site building. We are not trying to replace local authorities, but are playing our part in different ways. That may result in seven different funding regimes. Bringing in non-Government finance has been a major issue over the past couple of years.

We have had experience in the sector and quite a bit of money has come into it. Last week, the Central Bank gave approval for credit unions to provide finance to the sector. We have worked with credit unions for a number of years on the mechanisms around that. We now have approval from the Central Bank to fund some AHBs, but there has been a reclassification. It is ironic. A lot of work has been done with the credit union sector to get finance into the sector and the Central Bank has given support, with limitations. Credit union finance is almost seen as public money.

It is ironic that much work was done to bring credit unions into the sector, but there has now been a negative reclassification from the bodies who could use the funding in the first place. We had worked around a vague financial vehicle for that happen. It is disappointing from a number of points of view. The Deputy is correct. The spillover effect has manifested itself into the work we have done with the credit unions as one financial option. Larger bodies were part of the vehicle in terms of bringing in finance.