Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I agree with the Deputy on that. In terms of the market understanding about what affordable housing is, if one is a debtor and has loans then one wants to get the maximum amount for those assets to pay off one's loans. We cannot go in and sell the houses at under value to the local authority because the debtor will say: "Well, you have undermined my ability to be able to repay my loans." I think there are two different things going on here. Affordable housing is something that has to be agreed as part of legislation - a planning condition. If one gets planning, again for argument's sake, for 100 houses and 10% are social and, say, 10% or 15% are affordable, then if that is the planning condition that applies to everybody in the land the market has to adjust and deal with that, but that is not the way legislation is at present. All that the legislation says at present is that if one gets planning permission then the local authority must set down a minimum of 10%-----